


The Stars Themselves

by earthwitch, mmolloy



Series: The Stars Themselves [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, The Shoebox Project - Fandom
Genre: Canon Era, Canon Related, Epistolary, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:02:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 42,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4119399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earthwitch/pseuds/earthwitch, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mmolloy/pseuds/mmolloy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their too-brief reunion in the Shrieking Shack, Remus and Sirius cautiously resume the correspondence that they had maintained throughout their long friendship. But after thirteen years of a lonely life's cruelties, neither is the boy he was before Halloween of 1981. As the burgeoning threat of Voldemort grows ever closer, they must try to relearn each other, complete with the scars and fears and resentments of more than a decade apart, if they are ever to rediscover everything that they've lost. </p><p>A continuation of The Shoebox Project by Lady Jaida and Rave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

_“[...] when all the moments come together, when all the songs meet up with one another, you get something whole and complete and wonderful, people you loved and people you hated and a fondness for them you may not be able to recapture but everything you remember about them being somehow more than they really were, because that's what remembering everything does. When I'm old, I think, I'll look back on this and I won't remember 'That time Sirius thought, if he lit a fart on fire, he could make a star come out of his arse' but I'll probably remember the stars themselves.”_

\--Remus Lupin, _The Shoebox Project_

**  
**  


Greetings, gentle reader--

You’ve stumbled upon a sort of strange thing in your travels across the Harry Potter fandom: a work of fanfiction of a work of fanfiction. While perhaps not an entirely unique thing (as mmolloy is a great fan of wendymarlowe’s Sherlock epistolary _Dear John_ and the numerous works it has spawned in that fandom), we feel it necessary to give you a little background information before you dive right in to our little flea circus, here.

This particular work is inspired by and intended as a sort-of sequel to the inimitable _The Shoebox Project_ by Lady Jaida and Rave, which can be found in its entirety in PDF form at <http://shoebox.lomara.org/>. It was originally published on LiveJournal beginning on June 26, 2004, and although is still technically designated as a Work in Progress, has not been updated with a new entry since late in 2008. The whole history of the project is recounted in more extensive detail at <http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Shoebox_Project>. It’s a really fascinating story, and we would encourage you to read about it if you’ve any interest at all in the complications of collaborative fiction or the perils of publishing on the Internet, especially back in those simpler early days (read: the early aughts).

We were first introduced to _The Shoebox Project_ by our beautiful, talented, and infinitely cooler friend rennsuri, who had been a fan of _Shoebox_ when it was being regularly updated, and who shared it with us each separately after we became friends in college.

 

**How It Began (for mmolloy):**

mmolloy was still sort of in the closet about just how much of a rabid, embarrassing fangirl she was (is) when she and rennsuri got to bonding about Harry Potter one day in the infancy of their friendship. mmolloy mentioned that she’d resorted to reading fanfiction (which she at that point still viewed as something to be sort of embarrassed about…) to fill the harrowing gap between _Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire_ and _Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix_ , which was, if you will recall, roughly eleventy-jillion years long. rennsuri, not one to get nearly so hung up about shit like “what other people think about the things I like”, recommended that mmolloy read _Shoebox_ , so that they could talk about it. mmolloy tried, but, apparently being a twenty-year-old person who didn’t quite get the concept of multi-chapter works, only read the first entry out of upwards of twenty in the series and missed the rest at that point. Suffice it to say, she didn’t then really see what all the fuss was about.

It wasn’t until a few years later, when rennsuri introduced earthwitch to the story and earthwitch became mildly (or totally, if we’re being honest…) obsessed with it, that _Shoebox_ crossed her radar again. This time, she had evolved enough to understand the concept of PDFs (truly though, earthwitch had to show her), and devoured the whole thing within a few weeks. She was enchanted by the opportunity to dive back into a long-form visit to Hogwarts, with characters who were both familiar and rendered in an entirely unique and three-dimensional way that made the experience of reading _Shoebox_ as close an approximation to reading _Harry Potter_ as she had had since the age of eighteen. It became a go-to geek out topic when mmolloy and earthwitch would talk on the phone, which lead to the inception of the thing that you’re about to begin reading (assuming you’ve made it this far into the “too much information” preface of the thing).

**How It Began (for earthwitch):**

In all honesty, earthwitch started out as one of those people who secretly read fanfic and then mercilessly teased her friends (read: mmolloy) for doing the same. Yup. She was one of those. Truly the worst type of nerd. Don’t worry, she has since evolved. Anyway, whenever earthwitch and rennsuri would talk about Harry Potter (which was all the time, let’s be real), rennsuri would insist that she did not buy any Remus/Tonks romance, because _The Shoebox Project_ had ruined her forever. After years of this (earthwitch is always a bit late to the party - seriously, she still dresses like it’s 1994), earthwitch was finally ready to read this supposedly amazing fanfic. So, one August day, when she was feeling lonely and out of sorts, she Googled “The Shoebox Project”. Oh how her life would change. Never before had she shipped such a ship. But it didn’t just stop with mild - ok, severe - obsession. Reading _Shoebox_ directly influenced earthwitch’s decision to break up with her boyfriend, question her sexuality, and spend months pining after rennsuri (well, that wasn’t really a decision). So, no big.

Suffice it to say, earthwitch had to retract her earlier mocking. _Shoebox_ became a major talking point for earthwitch and rennsuri, and when earthwitch visited mmolloy later that year (and proved that _Shoebox_ did indeed have more than one chapter), mmollloy joined in on the obsession as well. During one such conversation, earthwitch and mmolloy lamented, not for the first time, the lack of fanfare during the Shrieking Shack reunion in _Prisoner of Azkaban_. “What do you think Sirius’ and Remus’ relationship was like once they were reunited?” earthwitch wondered. “I have a partly written letter on my computer that is trying to answer that very question,” mmolloy said. “Send it to me, and I’ll write the response.” Thus, _The Stars Themselves_ was born.

_The Stars Themselves_ is a collaborative work, just like the original _The Shoebox Project_. The format of the thing was born of that initial conversation, and each of us just sort of fell into writing one of the two main characters naturally from then on. Sirius Black is written by earthwitch, and Remus Lupin is written by mmolloy. We toyed around with the idea of switching perspectives in the early days of writing this, but have since both gotten so deeply involved with our characters that one of us writing the character not her own is a weirdly uncomfortable idea to contemplate. It’s been a fascinating and exciting ongoing discovery process that has helped us remain close even though we live many time-zones apart. [Insert sappy observation about the power of stories here.] We really hope that you enjoy what you read as much as we enjoyed writing it, and we always welcome your comments! (Seriously, we’re super excited to hear what you think.)

**Disclaimer:**

This is a work of fanfiction. We do not own the characters, settings, or broad premises herein described, which are the original intellectual property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury Publishing. Much of the backstory and tiny details (such as wand woods and the history of Azkaban) come from information housed at Pottermore.com, which is also the intellectual property of J.K. Rowling. We seek no financial gain from the online publication of this work, which is for entertainment purposes only. We’re only playing around in the gazillion-gallon sandbox of which Jo Rowling is the reigning Queen forever.

In addition, the characterizations and some of the events alluded to in this work are based on those originally developed by Lady Jaida and Rave in their work The Shoebox Project. We seek no financial gain from the online publication of this work, and take no credit for ideas originally developed and published in that original work of fanfiction. If it looks like Shoebox, walks like Shoebox, or quacks like a witty, faithfully-characterized duck… er, Shoebox… then there’s probably a really good reason for that. Lady Jaida and Rave built this really awesome sandcastle in a tiny corner of the gazillion-gallon sandbox, and we’re just building on to it and trying not to break anything.

And finally, all characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. And also: if you are/know someone whose life is eerily similar to the events contained herein… 1) I’m so sorry and 2) let’s trade lives, because I could seriously use a little more magic in my world.

 

...are you still here? Wow, good for you! As a reward for slogging through that entire thing… go ahead and click that little “Next Chapter” arrow down in the corner. We hope that you enjoy yourself, and thanks for coming along on this ride.


	2. Remus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remus Lupin, heading back to London after resigning from his position as Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at Hogwarts, writes his first letter to Sirius Black in thirteen years.

_12 June, 1994_

_Padfoot—_

__

_…bugger._

_I just sat here looking at your name for twenty minutes, not able to remember precisely what I should do next. We wrote back and forth enough as boys; you’d think I’d have some deeply buried riding-a-bike falling-off-a-log muscle memory for how it’s done. No luck on that score, it seems._

_I never thought I’d write your name again. Seeing it just sitting there, watching the ink dry… my brain seems to have gone off-line, and not in any good way, either._

_Snape was as furious as I’ve ever seen anyone at your getting away. Albus told me how you’d done it, when he came and found me in the forest the next morning. Not a conversation I’d wanted to be having while stark naked and freezing my bollocks off, but since when has life been fair, right?_

_And right now you’re laughing your emaciated arse off at the image of poor middle-aged Moony, hiding behind a bush while Albus Dumbledore explains about Hippogriffs and Time Turners and Who Knows What All, and you’re right to. It was one of the more surreal moments of my life (that time you transfigured all my socks into chinchillas notwithstanding.) If you’d been there, you’d’ve laughed and teased me for being scandalized by the whole situation. Like someone’s maiden aunt._

_Or maybe you wouldn’t. I guess I don’t really know how you’d react, anymore._

_But Snape got in his last word, in any case. “Accidentally” slipped up and mentioned my furry little problem to Lucius Malfoy, who immediately began with the pearl-clutching and the threatening and the forcing me to pack my bags. Which I have done. So I’m writing this on the Hogwarts Express, heading back to London. Don’t know what’s next, really. It’s frightening, to be honest, how fast things can change._

_You’d think I’d be used to that by now._

_I don’t even know if I’ll send this. I don’t think it makes a lot of sense, and Merlin knows if an owl could even find you. I’ve encrypted the paper, in any case, so all you’ll have to do to read it is hold it in your hands and say the words that open the map. I hope you think to try that._

__

_Please remember enough to try that._

__**  
**  
_\--Moony_


	3. Sirius

_20 June, 1994_

_Jesus, Moony, to read your letter, you'd think you were the one to spend the last thirteen years of your life in Azkaban! Woe is the world, we now see what becomes of Moony when there is no Prongs and no Padfoot to eat his books and slobber on his pillow. Prongs would be simply horrified! You cannot dishonor the dead, Moony. Since I cannot be there to provide the aforementioned services myself, I insist that you go out and buy yourself a dog immediately. Preferably a slobbery puppy with no manners, and I DEMAND that you teach it to thoroughly misbehave. It's a long shot, but truly your only hope._

_Naked Moony talking to Dumbledore about Hippogriffs! Again! You'd think once would have been enough. Now tell me, does it get more or less embarrassing as you get older? Because you know, the whole “practice makes perfect” blah blah blah story would make me think it gets better – now you know exactly which bush to hide behind, and just how to pull your shoulders back and make eye contact so you don't look like you're counting down the seconds before you can slump to the ground and cry some very maiden aunt-esque tears. On the other hand, everyone expects to see a dashing young man naked in the woods at least once in their lives, but a self-pitying middle-aged werewolf? That's dangerously close to being that old warlock who was always at Madame Puddifoot's, remember? Not that I ever went in, of course! I would just see him through the windows. When I was walking by. On my way to Zonko's. Anyway. I always wanted to pat him on the back, and tell him – very kindly of course – that it was creepy for him to be there, and really, it was time for him to retire to the Hog's Head._

_By the way, I don’t know what you’re complaining about with the chinchillas. The one that had the terrible bit of misfortune to be on your foot during the transformation clearly had the raw end of the deal, poor thing._

_So, what will old sad Moony do now that his teaching career has ended? Back to writing about aardvarks? Excuse me – editing other people's writing about aardvarks. You did tell me once that it was your one true calling. A long time ago._

_Your next letter, Moony (and it better get here fast, I've very little to do here, and so many people to plot revenge against, it really can get very dark), must be 50% less mopey than the last. Well, I want to give you a goal you can achieve (I know how you are with goals), so let's say 25% less mopey for this next letter, and then 50% less mopey for the one after that. How about you tell me what you've been up to these last thirteen years? With one best friend dead and the other living mostly as a dog inside Azkaban, I'm sure you were a bundle of laughs! Har har. Regale me with stories._

_Padfoot_

_P.S. Did you really think I had done it? For thirteen years, did you think that?_

 


	4. Remus

29 June, 1994

 

_To the Terribly Judgmental and Alarmingly Gaunt Edmond Dantes Impersonator Purporting to be the Marauder Padfoot--_

_... I do not mope. I have never moped a day in my life. I am, I'll have you know, all good cheer and swagger, and you would do well to remember it, you mangy old mutt. In the last_ twelve y _ears (was it so nice you felt the need to add one on to the total?) I have gained exponentially in sex appeal_ and _in charisma, and am constantly mobbed by gaggles of attractive young women (not all of them incoherent and French) wishing to bask in the glow of my sunny disposition and caress my rippling pectorals. And so, you see, I do not mope. So there._

_And I will, under no circumstances, be getting a puppy. Since you absconded for what, given your blase tone, I can only assume was a Dementor-y island paradise, my contact with canines of any ilk has been limited to once monthly, and the wolf is more likely to claw the pillow into violent, feathery oblivion than slobber on it. (Although he might also slobber, just for a change of pace from all the gnashing of teeth and howling in pain.)_

_But I do still have some of the books you tried to eat. In fact, I opened one up to teach my seventh year students about Gage's Cranial Protection Sequence (you remember? The one we used when James was convinced he could base-jump off the Astronomy Tower? Useful, that.) only to find that you'd chewed up the page when James was in the Hospital Wing, then thought better of it and tried to smoosh it back into some semblance of legibility. I opened up the book and out fell just flakes of dried paper pulp, accompanied by the frankly alarming smell of fifteen-year-old dog breath._

_Suffice it to say, the seventh year Hufflepuffs will just have to procure Muggle bicycle helmets, instead._

_I will never get used to talking to Dumbledore naked while hiding behind a bush. It does not matter the conversational topic; it will always be very low on the "Things Remus Wants to Do" list. Although I think he might have enjoyed himself more, this time. What with the rippling pectorals and all._

_I don't know what I'll do, now. The thing is: I_ liked _teaching. I liked feeling like I knew something useful. Like, even with everything inside me held together with spellotape and used chewing gum, I might make life even just that little bit easier for some spotty little twerp who doesn't yet know that the world is a cruel, uncaring place that will rip everything you love from you one autumn morning while you're off editing other people's writing about aardvarks, and then expect you to just go on living._

_...oh, dear. I've moped, haven't I?_

_I really was trying very hard not to do that, you know. You're being all jocular and jovial and jesting and... other 'j' words... about it, and since you're the one hiding in sea caves with a temperamental hippogriff, or wherever the hell you are, I wanted to humour you. I got through five entire paragraphs without... without. And I think that exceeds your goal, don't you? But I can't help it, as the moping is in my blood, now, because it turns out that there's not much else to do when all your friends are dead._

_And as long as I'm coming clean about things, my pectorals aren't all that rippling, either._

_I had a dream that you were Edmond Dantes, once. I remember you looked rather fetching in breeches and a cape. Shame about the years of false imprisonment, though._

_\--Moody... er... Moony_

_P.S. Don't ever ask me that again or I'll hex you into next September._

_P.P.S. And really? We're only going to talk about_ real _things in the postscripts? Fine. God forbid we behave like adults who have seen each other naked, or any of that other maturity rubbish people always talk about._

_P.P.P.S. ...I hope you're safe. Be safe._


	5. Sirius

_8 July, 1994_

_To the Middle-Aged Werewolf that Could!_

__

_Bravo, Moony! It's possible you even exceeded my expectations on your mope to non-mope ratio (admittedly, my expectations were very low, but I do so want you to succeed)._

_In the last_ thirteen _years – I am rounding up, by the way._ I'm _the one that spent a third of my life cozying up to Dementors,_ I _get to decide how long it was. Plus, the whole 'dog years' thing means that my time at the Dementor Resort was longer than your time, which was spent, as you would tell it, at the Prewett Brothers' Institute of Rippling Pectorals and Swagger, apparently. And now you've got me thinking about what a glorious thing such an institute would be, and how if it weren't for some evil wanker who loved killing innocent people and torturing everyone else, then the Prewett brothers could have used their brilliance to open such an institute. So of course I've forgotten whatever it was I was going to divulge to you about the last years of my life. It was probably something impressive and godly that would bring you tears._

_Why did you even bother trying to teach the 7th years that Skull Safe Nonsense, anyway? Clearly it did not work as planned (James never was the same afterwards, alas. Always more excited about cuddling with Lily than drinking with House Elves. Shame). Hufflepuffs should wear Muggle bicycle helmets as a rule anyway; it suits them. I don't know why such a practice hasn't been implemented already._

_Furthermore, furthermore --_

_And that's it. I'm all jovial-ed and jest-ed and j-worded out. But if I'm not teasing you about your (lack of) rippling pectorals, or laughing at naked Moony in the bushes, what's left? I've spent the better part of 13 years living as a dog and trying to evade those fetching creatures who want nothing more than to snog me and gobble up whatever meager soul I've got left. Who could I possibly be now?_

_Curse you, Moony! Your damned mopey-ness is infectious and I've caught your evil bug. You've got me doing that whole “talk about your feelings with limited sarcasm and minimal jokes” thing again. I hated it when we worked on it then, and I hate it now._

_But that's not true. And you know it, of course. I can see you sitting there, nodding your head with your eyes all big and listen-y, worrying at your scars. It's just. I haven't had a real conversation – one that my life didn't depend on – in 12 and half years. And now, here I am. And here you are. So -- now what?_

_So, tell me. If nude conversations with Dumbledore aren't high on the “Things Remus Wants to Do” list, what is? (And I firmly believe that such a list exists – I recall finding your lists hidden away everywhere, like an addict hides drugs! In the bathroom, under your dresser, used as bookmarks. My personal favorite of which was “Top 10 Brands of Parchment”, complete with sub-lists depending on whether the parchment was to be used for letter-writing or note-taking. I mean, really, Moony?) So, tell me, what is on this most recent list of yours? Now that you no longer teach mini-Snivelluses and mini-Kingsleys (I'm sure there are no mini-Siriuses or mini-Jameses, as we were once-in-a-lifetime creatures), you can throw caution into the wind and complete all the things on this sacred list! What's first? A cup of tea?_

_Meanwhile, while you fulfill your life's richest desires, Buckbeak and I are getting along swimmingly! Obviously, I will not tell you where we are currently honeymooning, but you can make one of your well-educated guesses based on the birds. The most absurd part of this on-the-run lifestyle is that my mode of transportation is HIPPOGRIFF! And a Hippogriff wanted by the Ministry, nonetheless. Not once, in all the times you and James made up fanciful stories about my life as an outlaw, did you say I would be traveling via HIPPOGRIFF! You could've studied a bit harder in Divination, if you ask me, Moony – it would've helped if I could've done some logistical planning ahead of time. On the bright side, he almost never tries to kiss me, steal my soul, or encourage me to re-live my dark and tormented past, so I would say things are looking up._

_You know, I bet the little dears learned a lot from middle-aged Moony this year. More than just the basic Remus stuff of How to Re-Organize a Bookshelf and How to Choose Which Quill Fits You Best. You actually studied, and you even understand the whole Learning Process thing. It's truly a shame the parents didn't want a kindly, if not a bit morose, ol' werewolf teaching their precious progeny. The possibility of needing to run for their lives once a month should be an asset to your qualifications! Get the little softies some experiential learning – it could only do them well. And you got to teach Harry. What's he like, Harry? I keep thinking about how if it weren't for the mangy, trembling, cowardly, sewer-y scum of a rat, I could finally fulfill my promise to James and be Harry's real guardian. He seems good. Is he good? Quieter than James. More like you? Was I left out of some raucous evening between you, James and Lily?! You DID kiss her! Was there a sultry, steamy, rippling pectoral-y tumble of which I was purposefully left out of that resulted in a child with Lily's eyes, James' stupid hair, and your sunny disposition?! Don't expect me to let bygones be bygones! If I was left out of that, I am about to leave my cozy honeymoon with Buckbeak and demand a heartfelt, groveling apology from you. AND James. AND Lily!_

__

_Indignantly,_

_Padfoot_

__

_P.S. It's just, my floaty island friends encouraged some rather awful thoughts for far too long._

_P.P.S. You've maturely been thinking about me naked?! Do tell._

_P.P.P.S. What are you implying? I'm always safe._

 


	6. Remus

_16 July, 1994_

_To Padfoot, Probably Somewhere Doing Indecent Things While Having Indecent Thoughts About the Prewett Brothers and Their Admittedly Indecently Spectacular Muscles--_

__

_It's been a long time since I thought about old Gid and Fay and their astonishing good looks and magnetism. I know there were a bunch of great wailing tributes to them after they met those Death Eaters in the outer Hebrides, but I never really saw or read any of them. To be honest, after... well, after. I didn't pay much attention to what was happening in the wizarding world. Kind of dropped off the map, with no one much left to miss me. But still. Good blokes, the Prewetts. Fabian is largely to blame for you getting attacked behind a garden shed and subsequently ingesting second-hand vomit, you know. So. That was really his fault. Not mine._

_And besides, anyone who possessed the strength of personality to enslave the Great James Potter and Sirius Black, even for so short a time, deserves our respect and admiration. Or are you still in thrall to their memories? How did that contract ever work itself out, I wonder?_

_(Just so you know, the Weasley genes seem to be much stronger than the Prewett ones, because I didn't see you fall over yourself even once in the presence of Gideon and Fabian's nephew. Which is quite a relief, actually, considering that he's thirteen and you've spent quite enough time in jail for my taste, thanks.)_

_Not that I want to indulge in a pissing contest with the Most Dangerous Escaped Murderer in All of Britain (not to mention the defending champion of the Marauders' Really Quite Disgusting and Seriously Why Are We Doing This We Are Civilized People For Merlin's Sake Pissing Contest) over who’s had it worse for the last thirteen years, and I spend quite a lot of my time trying very hard not to think about what life must have been like for you in that... place._

_But you can't think the years have gone whizzing by for me, either, Sirius. I've been living in dog years, too._

_So._

_You're very nice to say that I must have been a good teacher... that_ is _what you were saying, right? In between the teasing me for the reprehensible crime of being organized and the suggestions about writing child endangerment into the curriculum, that almost sounded like a compliment. I really was enjoying myself, actually. It's a brand new world everyday, you know, when your job is other people. Even more so when said people are less human and more roiling balls of hormones and angst. I'd not really interacted with any roiling balls of hormones and angst since I_ was _one, but I was surprised how quickly it came back to me-- the being a teenager. I was shocked at how well I could remember what that's like._

_And you'll doubtless be pleased to know that not a one of them got the drop on me all year, though a few tried with the Belching Brine in my tea and the allegations of kneazles eating their homework. They'd no idea that I'd cut my eyeteeth on preventing (and yes, alright, sometimes abetting) the pranks of Hogwarts' most notorious criminal duo. Although, I should tell you that Ron's older brothers could give you and James a run for your money, even when you were in top form. I am sorry to be the bearer of this surely devastating news; it seems the world spins on and new pranksters are born to eclipse the old. They had this one... it involved Snape's chair at breakfast and a bundimun and several pairs of what were really quite tasteful high heels... very elegant. You'd've been impressed._

_(How is my effort at inane conversation working? Are you feeling any less like a stranger in a strange land? I could write to you about the re-cataloguing of my several types of tea biscuits, but it might only give you more to tease me about, and then we'll_ never _find out who you are post-Azkaban if you're not making fun of me. And I am honestly curious to know the answer to that question.)_

_My list of things to do in life is very short, at this point. It mostly consists of reading, drinking that tea you mentioned, and not doing anything remotely adventurous ever again. After everything, I... well, I dropped off the map, a bit, like I said. Threw some stuff in a rucksack and lit out for parts unknown, and didn't come back for quite a while. I did anything to keep myself busy, to not think.  Meditated at the Palyul wizarding monastery in Tibet, camped out in the Catatumbo lightning storm in Venezuela, visited the militant merpeople who've settled in Lake Victoria. I didn't stop for a few years; just kept on moving every few weeks to somewhere and something new. Hid out during the moon, chained myself in secluded places with more protection charms than the vaults at Gringott's. Canadian tundra, caves in the Outback, a calving glacier on the Antarctic coast, once. There's an old prison in West Virginia that started making a mint off ghost tours after I'd stopped there. Some things never change._

_It all must sound terribly daring and out-of-character to you. Stuffy, book-bound Remus sleeping out beneath the everlasting lightning of a ceaseless, violent storm, fighting bone-cracking cold and echoing, dangerous silence in a crevasse in the Himalayas. It sounds strange to me, too, now. Like something out of someone else's life._

_Now that I think about it... I think it_ was _someone else's life. Because none of those mad, dangerous, wonderful things was ever on any version of the Things Remus Wants to Do list. Those things... those stupid, reckless things... they all had a distinctly Black tint about them. Things you'd talk about when you were pissed or angry or just incandescently joyful in that way you had, when you'd smile just so and pirouette around the flat and go on and on about what we'd do when our lives were finally ours again._

_You should know that I wasn't thinking about you when I did those things. I was trying very hard not to think of you at all, for nearly all the time you were gone. But. I look back at how I spent that time, and know that you'd gotten under my skin good and proper. Like you always have, damn you._

You're _the one who should have done those things._ You're _the one who would've become a famous curse-breaker or Auror or some other equally sexy and exciting vocation, and_ you'd've _fought off Lethifolds in Haiti or Infiri in Egypt and then you would have ridden back into London on your ex-convict hippogriff pal to find me quietly drinking tea and NOT having torrid three-way love affairs with the Potters, but instead editing books about magically enhanced hedgehogs or some such and folding your socks and hoarding all the good chocolate._

_And that would have been good, right? It would have been_ wonderful _._

_(...I may have some bad news. I think the moping is just going to keep happening. We've both given it the old Hogwarts try, but I think it might just be a numbers game, now, for both of us. To that end, I will attempt to conclude on a lighter note, just to keep the mope quotient (mope-tient?) as low as possible for this letter, at least.)_

_I was asleep in an empty compartment on the Hogwarts Express when the Dementors came looking for you. Sorry. I know I said lighter note, but it's important for you to have the context, here. I woke up to the cold and despair, and looked around to see James-- just a kid again-- collapse to the floor before the great bloody mouth-breathing thing._

_I thought I was hallucinating. That I'd finally gotten so pathetic and miserable that I was having visions of my best friend dying even younger than he was when... but anyway. That's how I met Harry. He opened his eyes after the attack, and it shot me right back to fourth year. You remember that awful song James wrote when he fancied himself John Lennon? Deep jade pools sparkling in a sweet fragrant forest of delight? Talk about reliving the worst memories of your life._

_The kid may be a pretty close ringer for James, but his eyes are all Lily._

_He is good. Quiet; you're right about that. Not in a sulky or tragic way, but still. In a way that he wouldn't be if things had turned out differently. You get the impression that he's spent a lot of his life trying very hard to be noticed as little as possible. Talented. He produced a patronus on his very first try. It wasn't fully-formed or anything, but still, that's damn impressive for a wizard his age. Determined and brave and impetuous and stupid. His father's son, through and through._

_Hell of a Seeker, but I guess you already knew that, didn't you? Your sentimentality is truly astounding, Sirius. Tracking spells have gotten much better while you've been away, you know. Risky move, sending the broomstick. Where did you get the money for that flying deathtrap, anyway?_

_It's late, and I've got a very pressing schedule of absolutely nothing to do tomorrow, so I'll say goodnight. I have to go scrub my brain of all images of James and Lily EVER having sex, not just the evil hypothetical ones involving my sorry arse that you've summoned into being, you bad, bad man. If I self-Obliviate too enthusiastically, know that it has (very occasionally) been nice knowing you._

__

_\--Remus_

__

_P.S. To be honest, there were moments where I wondered if it might be true. I hate myself for them, but they existed. I'm sorry._

_P.P.S. You need to eat a few sandwiches and wash your hair before that becomes even a remote possibility, my friend._

_P.P.P.S. You have a scar on your left hip, one just below your bottom lip, and the ability to turn into a honking great dog that would suggest otherwise. I'm asking nicely: be safe._

 


	7. Sirius

_27 July, 1994_

__

_To Moony, the Werewolf who Surpassed All Expectations and Left His Home To Do Things Other Than Buy Tea_

__

_It's a working title, but I think I'll turn that into a children's book. I'll have to use a pseudonym, of course. Convicted mass murderers hardly ever get second careers as children's authors. Any name suggestions? No, don't answer that._

_Who could have guessed? Moony, camped out under never-ending lightning. Moony, attempting to explain to merfolk why they should care about aardvarks. Moony, meditating in Tibet – well, no surprises there. Did it make your mind any less cluttered, I wonder?_

_Of course you were a good teacher. That is clearly what I was telling you. One month away from the classroom and already your comprehension skills are plummeting. Here's a thought! How about you open a school for baby werewolves? You could fulfill your (admittedly perplexing) love of teaching while also having guaranteed company on the full moon. Win-win, I'd say._

_I'm chalking up your obviously inaccurate comment about those Weasley boys to the fact that it's been thirteen-odd years since you've been on the receiving end of a patented Prongs and Padfoot Masterpiece. Never fear, Moony, I forgive the indiscretion. Though I do have to say that any creature – young or old, human or werewolf, magic or muggle – who makes Snape their target, has my unwavering support._

_Who am I since leaving my relaxing Island getaway? Ugh, Moony. If James were here, I could roll my eyes at him and then we would throw you into the lake and hide all your clothes and eat all your chocolate and drool on all of your books until you were filled with such love for the kindness of your dear friends that you forgot you ever asked us such inane questions to begin with. I couldn't answer your question even if it were my deepest wish and most burning desire. Not because I'm being obstinate or obtuse or obscure or obnoxious or...obsolete (see, you get under my skin too, bullocks). Because I don't know. You'll have to force yourself to hang around with me again one day (and then you can add Spent Time with Escaped Mass Murderer to your list of Things Remus Has Done But Wishes He Hadn't) and you’ll be able to answer that question yourself. I cannot tell you who the Formerly Suave and Heartbreakingly Debonair Sirius Black is now, but I can tell you what he does._

__

_My current life looks something like this:_

_I wake to Buckbeak sensually and lovingly pecking at my fingers, toes, elbows or (on one unfortunate morning) inner ears. He seems to be taking this honeymoon scenario rather seriously. I have yet to discover what prompts him to bestow such caring displays of affection, but it rather abruptly pulls me from my delightful dreams of endless vertical bars and helpless scrawny teenage boys. Upon waking, I begin making myself a breakfast feast. Nuts stolen from local squirrels. Squirrels stolen from Buckbeak (my little joke, of course! I would never steal from a Hippogriff. Do you think I have a death wish?). Roots of some plant or another. After meeting my most basic nutritional needs, I can choose from any number of activities properly suited for a daring outlaw with a 10,000 Galleon bounty on his head. From staring up at the sky to gazing off into the woods, from rearranging my 5 belongings for most efficient tent space (tent obtained from one loyal though rather dingy pub owner with an unsettling fondness for goats) to attempting to teach Buckbeak Cribbage (you can imagine how well that goes). I can spend a whole day watching one branch on one tree and then suddenly couldn’t possibly sit still another second. I pack everything up and Buckbeak and I are on our way within moments. We’ll sometimes apparate to five different places before setting up camp again. On days like that, I’ll usually pace the tent for seconds or minutes or hours - however long it takes for Buckbeak to become dangerously annoyed with me. And that, dear friend, is a day in the life of the Most Wanted and Supremely Dangerous Sirius Black. Now that I think about it, all this staring at trees and eating breakfast with squirrels sounds scarily similar to the life you once dreamily hoped for (minus the Hippogriff)...looks like you weren’t the only one living someone else’s life. Seems we traded plans along the way. But if that’s the case, where are all the chocolates? And when are you about to come bounding in from all your adventures? By the way, I never pirouetted a day in my life. I took a manly turn about the room._

_Of course that life would have been good, Moony, but it didn’t happen. Did you turn into a masochist since we last met? Do you derive a perverted pleasure in listing off all of the things we didn’t get and don’t have?_

_That was a rather pathetic attempt at a lighter note, you know. Images of James/Harry dying on a train, how droll! Poor Moony, so far gone that stories of children collapsing and Dementors on trains constitutes a lighter note._

_You’ll be proud of me, Moony. Despite all of your doubts and laments about my ability to care for house plants and sandwich pixies, I am proving to be a thoughtful, kind, and most dedicated godfather. At least, as much as one can be when one spends much of each day as a dog attempting to teach a Hippogriff to toss a ball so that we can add “Fetch” to our daily activities. You may recall that young Harry’s birthday is coming up. You may also recall that I excel at choosing birthday gifts for Potters. Currently, however, obtaining birthday gifts remains rather dangerous and logistically frustrating (getting the Firebolt involved many rather dull shopkeepers, a secret Black family bank vault kept under a false name - you remember how paranoid darling old mum was: “If those Half-Breeds know it’s a Black vault, half of our gold will be gone by morning!” - and a few well-placed...diversions). Lucky for me, I have befriended a young Muggle girl. Not what you think! No quiche involved! More accurately, Padfoot has befriended a young Muggle girl. She doesn’t appear to have many friends, but she’s devoted to the local strays and gives the best (well, second-best) ear scratches I have ever encountered. Yesterday she stood next to me as I was gazing into a cake shop, trying to devise a plan for how I could get one for Harry. Before I knew what was happening, she walked into the shop, bought the cake I was looking at and had it boxed up. She gave it to me along with some ear scratches and babbles in some language or another. I suppose I should tell Harry the cake is from her as well._

_I almost forgot! As a favor to you, I've come up with a few brilliant ideas about how you could support yourself so that you can properly revel in your tea addiction. How about you start demanding a cut for all those Ghost Tourism agencies making bank on your tragedy? Think how much you'd have already, if Hogsmeade properly compensated you for making the Shrieking Shack convincingly terrifying? You may as well exploit your pain. The rest of the world certainly does._

__

_\--Padfoot_

__

_P.S. What a shame. You don't even have the excuse that the soul-devouring mouth-breathers made you think it._

_P.P.S. Sandwiches are a bit hard to come by at the moment – how decent of you to remind me! However, now that you mention it, the least you could do to help your dashing, alluring, though currently thoroughly hungry dear friend, is send a few sandwiches tucked into your next novel...\_

_P.P.P.S. Those scars are becoming. And I would say my ability to turn into a rather large dog keeps me_ very _safe._

 


	8. Remus

_8 August, 1994_

 

 _To The Fantabulous Mister Snuffles, Famous Children’s Author Who In_ No Way _Bears_ Any _Resemblance to the Escaped Convict Known As Sirius Black, and It’s Just a Coincidence That He Also Happens to Hang About with a Homicidal Hippogriff, Nothing to See Here--_

_If you write a children’s book, that title will be longer than the actual text. I hope you’re planning to get someone really good to do the illustrations, because the storyline certainly isn’t going to have the thing flying off the shelves… I am not half so exciting as you makes me sound, anyway. But you, of course, already know that._

_Here are your sandwiches, you drifting vagabond. Although I don’t know why you can’t just use your charming great puppy-dog eyes on your non-quiche girl and help yourself to the kingly banquet that will subsequently be set before you. The human version of you could do with some fattening up, true. But from the little I saw of him at the end of the school year, Padfoot still retains some of his native…_ je ne sais quoi _.  Any animal rescue in Great Britain would be happy to take his scrawny arse in… put him in the fundraising ads on telly, get him adopted by some nice old Muggle couple from Brighton. You could live out the rest of your preternaturally long doggy life sprawled in lazy comfort on a fluffy brown pillow from Marks & Spencer._

_…hm. That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. Shame werewolves can’t really pass for rescue mutts, or I might try that myself._

_And speaking of my involuntary lycanthropic hobby: I suppose you were kidding about the school for baby werewolves, but honestly, Sirius. It’s not really such a funny joke. Dumbledore tells me that another kid got bitten just a week ago. Third one this year. She’s thirteen, so Merlin knows she had enough problems before this, and now… it’s just. Not so funny, right at the moment._

_Bother. Apparently my chipper attitude only ever has enough pep for one paragraph at a time._

_I’m trying to be entertaining, you see, since the image of you sitting still for any length of time (while not under the influence of gillyweed, of course. Remember that time seventh year you smoked James’ whole stash by yourself and were convinced you were made of granite for three hours? I wish we’d learned that trick earlier, actually. Might have saved you a load of time spent in detention…) just sitting there and staring at twigs… the thought makes me come over a bit wobbly._

_Sirius sitting still. Unnatural even to ponder, that. Like trying to imagine a clean-shaven Hagrid. Or a Snape well-acquainted with shampoo._

_And while you are sitting still, or sleeping, or being made sweet beaky love to by an avio-equine monstrosity, it should at least comfort you to know that, while I can sadly do nothing about the endless vertical bars, I can assure you that you know_ no _scrawny teenage boys who are in_ any _way helpless._

_Harry Potter can produce a patronus. He’s thirteen years old, and he disarmed Severus Snape, whom, although you may not like him very much, you must agree is quite a formidable wizard. He fought a basilisk and survived, he was Gryffindor’s Seeker at eleven, and, it must be noted, he sprung your arse and sent you on your interspecies honeymoon while Cornelius Fudge was downstairs rounding up your Dementor pals for a reunion._

_When Harry faces a boggart, it turns into a Dementor. This boy, who lost his_ parents _to an almighty genocidal_ terrorist _before he could_ remember _them, fears nothing but the very embodiment of fear._

_Harry Potter makes you and me look like cowering, weak-chinned old men, my friend._

_That said… of_ course _you worry about him. You were supposed to be there for his entire life. To tell him daring stories of the Marauders by the fire while Lily rolled her eyes and James egged you on. To sneak him out for flying lessons and make up mad stories about gnome attacks when you brought him back with bruises. To take the piss out of James when he made Seeker so young and show up at his first game dressed up like a lion._

_And you didn’t get to do any of that. Of course, you’re entitled to worry. Just know that he can hold his own. He grew up just fine without you there to help, even though you were supposed to be._

__

_~~Sorry, am I being a masochist again?~~ _

 

_~~I wish you wouldn’t pretend that everything’s~~ _

_~~~~ _

_~~How is it masochistic to~~ _

_~~~~ _

_~~Can you please just~~ _

__

Damn _it, Sirius! You’re not allowed to call me a masochist for daring to even acknowledge that we’ve lost things! I’ve had thirteen_ bloody _years to live with all of the what-ifs and could-have-beens, and damn it, I’m not going to pretend like those thirteen years didn’t happen. Peter betrayed us all, and James and Lily were_ murdered _, and you were accused of selling them to Voldemort and carted off to Azkaban, and all of that_ HAPPENED _, Sirius! You can’t just keep pretending James is on vacation! Have you ever even_ mourned _him? Have you let yourself_ feel _it? You’ve lost so much, Sirius. Aren’t you angry? Aren’t you_ furious _? Aren’t you heartbroken, or even just a little put out?_

 _You do_ not _get to accuse me of reveling in tragedy just because I admit that it happened!_

_It happened._

_And maybe you don’t get to be suave, just yet. Or heartbreakingly debonair. But that doesn’t mean you aren’t anything, you know. You’ve got your life back, more or less, and you are…_

 

_Y_ _ou are…_

_Well. I don’t know either. I hadn’t really gotten that far past alive and innocent and free, to be perfectly honest with you._

_Those three words have been drumming themselves through my head since I opened the map that night and saw both your name and Peter’s disappearing into the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack. I’ve thought them so often, and in such quick succession, that they’ve formed a kind of rhythm in my head._

_Alive. Innocent. Free._

_Alive. Innocent. Free._

_That’s enough to be getting on with, isn’t it? Can’t that just be… enough? For right now, anyway?_

_You’re alive, Sirius. You were dead. For thirteen years, you were dead, and now you’re alive again, and you’re innocent, and you’re free._

_The rest will come. I’ll try to help you find it._

_Eat your sandwiches before they grow ecosystems, please._

_\--Remus_


	9. Sirius

_20 August, 1994_

__

_Alive? Innocent? Free? Goddamn it, Remus! I've_ been _alive and innocent for thirteen years! For thirteen years, I was_ dead _? How dare you! Deadened, yes. Praying for death, yes. But painfully, brutally, horrifyingly alive. I_ remember _those years. I_ remember _... And while I wouldn't really call that_ living _, I was certainly alive. And free?_ Free _? Free to hide away in the forest, and caves, and marshes? Free to steal Muggle table scraps and catch too-slow squirrels? Free to see the world and all the people I've worried about_ every single day _, but not participate, not interact with them? Alive. Innocent. Free. That mantra's for you,_ mate _. Not me._

_James is dead! James is dead! James is_ DEAD! _There! Are you happy now? Did that fulfill some deep-rooted need you have? How dare you. How dare you! Did I mourn James? Did I mourn him! Have you_ any _idea, even the_ slightest _notion, even the_ vaguest _inclination that you gleaned from one of your precious all-knowing books, of what Azkaban is_ like _? Of what Dementors_ do _? Did I mourn him? I spent_ twelve years _seeing him die! Not a minute went by that I didn't see him crushed beneath the rubble of his house, or standing in his home, wand shaking and glasses sliding down his nose, trying every spell he can think of to stay alive, or locked arm in arm with Lily, barricading the door to Harry's room, setting up every protective spell known around it. Not a_ minute _went by that I couldn't physically feel the fact that James Potter – the stupidest, most cocky, most annoyingly lovestruck, best friend I ever had or will have – died. Died because of ME. Because of some fuck-up blood-traitor from the worst family imaginable who was never good at coming up with long-term strategies and why did people choose to listen to me this time? Because I_ wasn't there _for him when he needed me. Because I helped convince him that using Pettigrew as Secret Keeper was safer for all of us. Because he_ needed _me, and_ I wasn't there. _He needed me. And I wasn't there. Where was I? How could I have been anywhere else while my best friend was being murdered? I took care of him, Moony! That was my job. To look after James Potter. I was there when he needed more dung bombs. I was there when he accidentally vanished all his hair rather than making it lie flat in an insane attempt to woo Evans. Hell, I even got rid of my own hair so he wouldn't feel alone! I was there when he was dumped, when Dumbledore was disappointed, when Death Eaters attacked us, when all his underwear was stolen, when he was secretly homesick. I was there when_ _Harry was born_ _and when h_ _is parents died! But when Voldemort came. When_ Voldemort _came, not to vanish his hair or be disappointed or steal his underwear, but to KILL HIM. When it actually_ mattered _. When he actually_ needed _me. Where was I?_

_Where was I?_

_Snugly wrapped in a duvet, snoring in your ear._

_Fuck, Moony! FUCK! Where the fuck are_ you _in this blissful alternate future with Harry? Why weren't you there in his life? Why_ aren't _you there in his life? You, who are Alive – Innocent – Free and have been for_ years _. Why aren't you buying him books he doesn't want and teaching him Keats to woo girls (or boys, you never can tell) and making him cocoa when he's unhappy and regaling him with stories of the Marauders? Why did you stop living, when you are so very much alive?_

__

_-P._

 


	10. Remus

Remus lowers the letter to the rough-hewn table with hands that are only a little unsteady. Outside, the rain thuds dully against the roof, rustling through the leaves of the trees that shield the little cottage from sight of the village of Betws y Coed, nestled snugly in the misty valley below. He walks slowly to the hob and waves his wand slightly absently, causing a flame to leap up around the steel sides of the kettle before settling down to lick at its base.

He stares at the flames until the kettle whistles, somehow feeling the presence of Sirius’ letter on the table behind him, though he continues to look determinedly in the opposite direction. The words float stubbornly before his eyes, the furious upstrokes of Sirius’ usually elegant handwriting spiking through the steam as he pours water over the teabag and waits for it to steep.

_I’ve been alive and innocent for thirteen years!_

He can almost hear Sirius screaming the words at him—not in the rich, posh baritone of his youth, but rather in the raspy, hollow croak that speaks of too many nights spent screaming, with no hope of anyone hearing, into the starless, Dementor-filled dark.

He has been such an _unbelievable_ arse.

The letter continues to burn into his awareness as he sips his tea, looking out the window onto the craggy, fog-covered mountains of Snowdonia. It feels like a constant, blunt pressure just at the base of his skull; the same kind of insistent mental itch that had plagued him after he’d awoken that morning to news of Sirius’ escape, which had only lessened somewhat as he’d watched that first owl winging away from him, bearing a letter to the man he’d lost so many miserable years ago.

Remus swears, setting his mug down on the windowsill a little too harshly, and then swears again when hot tea splashes over his hand and onto the rough wooden floor. But the stinging in his hand brings his mind back to the present, which, although it is lonely and too quiet and damp, is infinitely preferable to the dark imaginings that are flickering in the corners of his mind.

_Have you the vaguest inclination of what Azkaban is like? Of what Dementors do?_

In point of fact, he’s spent years of his life avoiding precisely those questions. He’s travelled to every continent, sought out the wild cacophony of the cities and the dead silence of the wilderness, all in hopes of cowing his imaginings of Azkaban into submission. He’s traipsed across the whole lonely world trying to escape from even the thought of the place, and each time he felt the shadows slowly encroaching, he’s picked right up and moved right on again.

It was a luxury Sirius had never had.

The tea is hideously over-brewed— _forgot to take the tea bag out again_ —and Remus grimaces around a lukewarm mouthful before giving it up as a bad job and dumping the whole bitter mess down the drain. He takes his time washing the mug, not just rinsing it out as he might have done, but using soap and sponge to scrub at the thing as though he can erase all his vast stupidity if he can just get this one mug clean enough. Of course, this attention to detail has nothing at all to do with the fact that the letter is still sitting innocently on the table, heavy with silent reproach.

_Why did you stop living, when you are so very much alive?_

The mug is actually squeaking beneath his sponge, now, and there is nothing for it but to turn off the tap and stare unseeingly out the window onto the bleak and rainy afternoon that seems to directly mirror his own dour mood.

Remus has always been good with words. Or, he thinks he has. He’s certainly spent enough of his life thinking about them, writing them, and reading them to fancy himself something of an aficionado. He’s spent the better part of his existence surrounded by words, and has still managed to use them to bollocks up the most important thing in his life.

Not that there’s much to it, at the moment.

The tiny, drafty cottage is secluded enough to serve its purpose during the full moon, and since Remus never feels particularly social, regardless of the lunar cycle, it suits him fine. He’s spent the two and a half months since leaving Hogwarts holed up in relative seclusion, with only the occasional letter delivered by shockingly ostentatious tropical birds to break the monotony of his days.

And now he’s gone and botched it up, good and proper. The letter still sits on the rough table like a reproach, and Remus continues to pretend it isn’t there as he adds more wood to the fire in the river stone hearth. The flames crackle up merrily, filling the slowly darkening room with flickering orange light that itself feels like some sort of reprimand—warmth not afforded to prisoners trapped and forgotten ( _forgotten_!) on storm-drenched islands with floating nightmare creatures. 

He picks up the _Prophet_ to distract himself, although he’s already read it cover to cover twice. The Dark Mark glares at him from the front page, beneath the headline shouting SCENES OF TERROR AT THE QUIDDITCH WORLD CUP! and the hysterical, overwrought prose of some tabloid gossip-monger to whom he can’t believe the _Prophet_ would even condescend to give a by-line. 

And yet everything she said can’t be fabrication. The Dark Mark has been seen; the picture makes him think sickeningly of the night that Marlene died—the night Lily had knocked, sobbing, on his door and flung herself into his arms to cry and wait, all that long, sleepless night, for word of James and Sirius, who were supposed to have been with Marlene on that mission. When the owl had come, bearing jaunty reassurances, he’d very nearly gone himself to the safe house and punched Sirius right in the jaw. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

He sighs, and puts the paper down again. Now that Sirius has resurrected himself, he seems to be in every thought that runs through Remus’ head. It’s as if his mind is making up for twelve years of being forced to turn its thoughts in any other direction, and now the backed-up musings and wonderings and yearnings of more than a decade are flooding his neurons, and he is powerless to stop them.

And if that’s the case, he won’t ever get any peace until he’s written the letter, the very thought of which sends his stomach sinking down toward his knees. But he’d quite like to sleep tonight, and with little fragments of Sirius’ angry, hurt tirade floating through his mind, he’s reasonably certain it won’t happen until he’s done what he can to put the situation to rights.

Standing somewhat stiffly—the full moon has left him battered and more sore than usual this month—he shuffles in sock feet to the small bed, beside which stands an even smaller desk. Flicking his wand at the lantern hanging above it, he sits down and draws out parchment and quill, dipping into the ink and then pausing, his hand suspended above the parchment and his mind suddenly blank. 

He’d thought, last time he sat down to write to Sirius Black, that he was being comforting. Reassuring his… friend? ( _Is that the word? Seems inadequate, somehow._ ) that life could go on. Instead, he’d ripped off scabs that might have, slowly, been healing, and Sirius had as good as said it was Remus’ fault that he’d not been there for James when he most needed him. What can he _possibly_ say that could even _begin_ to make this right?

Running one hand through the hair that showed more grey strands with each passing moon, he sets the quill down and picks up his wand, summoning the bottle of Firewhiskey he stashed behind the clock on the mantle when he arrived in June. Taking a deep swig that burns all the way down and fills his belly with a glow that is a little like courage, he picks up the quill again and begins to write.

 

_26 August, 1994_

_Dear Padfoot,_

_I… I am an arse. I really don’t know what else I can say, except for to reiterate that I am a stupid, insensitive arse. I could try to tell you I didn’t mean what I said, but what good would that do? I said it, and I can’t take it back, because you’re too far away to Obliviate and I’ve always been pants at it anyway and I’d probably end up taking your head right off and then where would we be?_

 

Right. So far, so good. Remus takes another long pull from the bottle, and writes on with the whiskey warming his cold hands as it spreads out along his limbs.

_I knew you weren’t dead, Sirius. I knew it all along, and that’s probably why I tried so hard to convince myself that you_ were _. I just. I know that makes less than no sense. But no one had ever escaped from Azkaban, before you. It wasn’t even a consideration… I_ couldn’t _let myself think that you’d be the exception. Although if anyone could be, it would be you. Of course it would be you. You’ve always been impossible, but... but it was easier to kill you than to hold out hope that you somehow weren’t already dead._

_Dead inside, I mean. I’ve seen people after they’ve been Kissed. Did you know that? No. You wouldn’t. I didn’t see it until you’d been gone for something like four years. I was in Newfoundland. I didn’t have much contact with wizards, then, but fell in with a young Turkish warlock on the run from something or other. Adem, he was called. Reminded me a bit of James. Cocky, confident, but always game for a laugh and a prank. Always smiling, always taking the piss out of me for being so gloomy. I ran with him for about a month, and I never saw Adem sit still for more than three minutes strung together._

_I never did find out what he was running from, but it must have been bad, because one night, as the fog was rolling in and you couldn’t see three inches in front of your nose, they came swooping in and Kissed him. Right there, in front of me. And then just melted back into the mist._

_I shook him and slapped him and tried everything I could think of to get him to respond to me… he was just a shell. Not a person. Not anymore. I tried to get him to move, tried to get him to safety, but it was like dragging around a corpse. I finally had to leave him there, lying on a godforsaken jut of rock sticking out into the north Atlantic in February. I couldn’t_ do _anything. But I tried._

 _And the Dementors had only been there for a minute. Maybe less. I_ couldn’t _let myself think about what could be happening to you, trapped in there with them for minutes and hours and days and years. I_ know _it isn’t fair, Sirius, and I_ know _it isn’t right. But. I_ had _to kill you. Because thinking about you like that would have killed_ me _._

 

The level in the whiskey bottle is slowly going down. There is a pleasant sort of vague buzzing somewhere deep behind Remus’ eyes-- not drunk, not exactly. Werewolf biology is both a blessing and a curse, in this regard. But not precisely all here, just the same. Remembering Adem, with his bright smile and devil-may-care attitude, still stings just a bit underneath his ribs. But if he’s not going to tell the truth to Sirius now, try to make him understand just why he’s been so inadvertently cruel, when will he? He dips the quill again and begins to write, skipping a few lines, just because he can.

_I’m sorry. Sorry I killed you. Sorry I told you I had. And I’m sorry I said those things about you mourning James. But. Sirius, the way you talk, sometimes. It’s like you want to pretend it didn’t happen. And I don’t know if that’s your intention and I should just let it go, but I can’t ignore it. It’s like a giant hippogriff in the room with me at all times and… oh wait. Bad analogy. Sorry._

_James… James was a grown man when he died, Sirius. A husband. A father. He_ wasn’t _a boy anymore, wasn’t the skinny, bald, pantsless thirteen-year-old you always felt like you had to protect. When he died, he died protecting his_ family _. And there wasn’t anything you could have done. We’d grown up, you know? You had, and he had, and I had, and Lily had, and we were just getting the hang of the whole “adult” thing, with the snug duvets and the wet nappies and the constant threat of mortal danger. And then it was all gone. We never really got a chance to get_ good _at it, the adult thing. We never got a chance to see how we were going to turn out._

_Sometimes the world is just… cruel._

_I wish I could understand why the world is cruel. Why I got bit when I was just a little kid. Why Harry Potter was orphaned at one. Why Bartemius Crouch decided you shouldn’t have a trial and left an innocent man to rot in Azkaban. Why I left Adem out on that cliff, why I told you you were dead to me, why thoughtless, reckless morons decided to send up the Dark Mark over the Quidditch World Cup last night. But I can’t understand those things, because sometimes the world is just uselessly, hopelessly cruel._

_But saying that to you is sort of preaching to the converted, isn’t it?_

_I’m sorry for all the senseless cruelty in the world._

_I’m sorry I’m such an insensitive arse._

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

__

_\-- Moony_

He sits there for long moments, the whiskey gone, watching the ink drying in the slowly dimming light of the dwindling fire. Then he folds and seals the parchment, performing the security charms that are second nature to him after so many weeks of writing these letters.

Walking rather loosely to the window, he pulls up the sash and whistles, soft and low, until the whisper of wings announces the presence of the great brown owl that seems to call this cottage home, at least as much as Remus does. The bird eyes him imperiously and sticks out her foot impatiently. He smiles a bit at that, and obliges her, fastening the letter to her leg and watching her spread her great wings. He feels the blunt pressure that’s been plaguing him since the first time he read that letter lessen slightly as she takes off and disappears into the rainy twilight.

She does not even have to wait for instructions; like she knows there’s only one person in the world he’ll ever send her to.

 


	11. Sirius

Sirius hasn't slept for days. Well, if he's honest with himself, he hasn't _really_ slept in nearly thirteen years. But over the past year, he has gotten closer to what most people would call “sleep”. With each passing week, the periods of lying down with a calm heart-beat and steady breathing have gotten longer and longer. The number of times he startles Buckbeak with his shouts and leaps out of bed are fewer and fewer. Until last week, that is.

Why had he written that letter? Had he really needed to swear so very much? Why couldn't he at least have held back on mocking Remus? His words about Remus' precious books jump into his mind, and he cringes. Here Remus is, the one person who has reached out to him, the one person who might even come close to understanding him. The only person alive who loved him _before_ and who is still offering...something ( _friendship? Is that the word?_ ) _after_. It is so much more than Sirius had hoped for. Far beyond what he had allowed himself to dream of after escaping. And Sirius has gone too hard, too fast, like always, and driven Remus away for sure.

Sirius rolls over on his cot again, making the springs squeak ominously. Over in his favourite corner, Buckbeak snaps his beak twice: a warning. “I know, I know, I'm sorry. I just...can't...get comfortable,” Sirius finishes pathetically.

The air inside the tent, roomy though it is, chokes Sirius. The threat of rain sits heavily in the air, and the sickly sweet aroma of the dazzling local flowers fill his nose and throat. “Aarrgh, bugger this,” Sirius runs his hand over his hair – which remains far too matted to run his hands _through_ – and sits up.

Buckbeak looks at him sharply, prompting Sirius to raise his hands in surrender. “Alright, I get it, I'll leave you be.” Although Buckbeak tolerates the constant relocation and surely unpleasant Side-Along Apparation with more grace than Sirius had anticipated, mess up Buckbeak's REM sleep one too many times and you'll be sorry in the morning. Giving up his own quasi-sleep as a lost cause yet again, Sirius shoves his dingy blankets aside and shrugs on his cloak, crossing the floor quickly and stepping outside.

Although the air is still thick with humidity out of the tent, it feels less suffocating to Sirius, and he breathes in deeply. The chirps and scurrying of night creatures have a calming effect. Sirius sinks to the ground, back against the tent flap, looking up at the stars beyond the trees. The moon is waning now – it was full just two days ago. And two days ago, just like the 166 full moons before it, Sirius had spent the night staring up at the sky, hearing something howl in the distance, or maybe just in the back of his mind.

He shakes his head, a futile attempt to force it clear.

Sirius had never expected to get a letter from Remus. Not after their cordial and measured reunion in the Shrieking Shack. Not after Remus admitted to believing in Sirius' guilt for nearly thirteen years. Because although Sirius had admitted to having held the same belief, his words – unlike Remus' – had been lies. He had never believed Remus had betrayed them – at least, never believed it while in his right mind. He hadn't told Remus about the Secret Keeper switch not because he didn't trust him, but because he had wanted to keep him safe. Moony is a man who, of his own admission, couldn't lie to his mother about brushing his teeth! And the success of their strategy – really the only thing they had going for them – hinged on the sheer absurdity of it. No one would trust Peter with so great a responsibility. That's why he was the perfect person: no one would expect the Potters to be so careless! But it required absolute secrecy, and they hadn't wanted to burden Remus with such a crucial plot point.

“Fat lot of good _that_ did,” Sirius mutters to the stars. The stars twinkle back, unconcerned.

But the truth is, although Sirius had not allowed himself even the smallest of hopes before getting Remus' first letter, he had been doing nothing but hope since. He had carefully crafted each response, calling forth the jaunty Voice of Sirius Past – the whimsical words of the boy Remus had fallen in love with. _Well, I guess that's over now._ Pressing the heels of his palms against his eyes, Sirius' own words float across his mind. _Where the fuck are you in this blissful alternate future with Harry? Why weren't you there in his life? Why_ aren't _you there in his life?_ His scorn, his anger, his frustration, all of which he had kept blissfully below the surface of his other letters, had had to come bursting forth in this last one. _What a fool I am. How could I have said such terrible things?_

 _Terrible?_ A voice deep within Sirius' disheveled mind challenges. _Or true?_

Sirius does not deign to reply. It would only encourage it.

_How long did you think you could keep this up? Did you really think Remus would believe you were the same boy he fell in love with?_

Unconsciously massaging his knuckles into his thighs rather more aggressively than would seem pleasant, Sirius peers out into the forest. That rustle he just heard may have been a bunny. A bunny sounds good. Filling. Pretty easy to catch. He continues to ignore the Voice (which, now that he thinks about it, sounds annoyingly like Lily).

The steady cadence of cricket chirps fills his ears, emanating a sense of peace and steadiness he envies. _Jealous of crickets_ , Sirius smirks. _Add that to your list of desirable qualities._ He leans forward, straining to hear something else, anything else – rustling, breathing, a twitch, a wing. Nothing. Sighing, he leans back against the tent once more.

 _At least he knows now_ , he tells himself, rather abruptly returning to his ever-present thought spiral.

 _Knows what, exactly?_ The voice asks.

_Me...I guess. Whoever that is._

The soft dawn light touches on Sirius' hair, then forehead, then eyes, slowly drying the dew drops clinging to his dark hair and lashes. He keeps his eyes closed, savoring the warmth the light spreads across his cheeks, and chin, and shoulders, until he hears a soft coo that could mean only one thing. His eyes snap open. At once, his pulse races as if he's just finished running full tilt. Sirius registers all possibilities in the time in it takes to close the distance between him and the exhausted brown owl: _Remus doesn't hate him! Remus hates him so much he has to tell him exactly how much in precise detail! Remus is dead and the Ministry is writing to tell him! Pettigrew has been caught and this letter is granting Sirius his pardon! The Ministry has located Sirius and this letter is warning him that he is already surrounded by invisible Aurors!_ The list could go on, but Sirius pushes all thoughts aside as he sees the precise, round letters forming his name. It's one of the first two options then. For a split second, Sirius merely holds the letter in his hands, staring at his name, allowing himself the momentary freedom of not knowing what comes next. Then he rips the envelope open, taking care not to harm the letter inside.

_Dear Padfoot, I...I am an arse._

Well, this is decidedly unexpected. Sirius reads on, his pulse slowly returning to normal.

_It was easier to kill you than to hold out hope that you somehow weren't already dead._

__

Hands shaking, Sirius lowers the letter to his side, gazing up at the tops of the verdant trees surrounding him, taking deep steadying breaths. _This isn't Remus' fault. He didn't think you would ever be free. Of course he didn't. And it's not like Azkaban allows visitors, not for the likes of you. Of course Remus had to kill you. You can't blame him for that._

__

_...Adem...cocky, confident...always smiling._

Sirius decides sitting down would be nice. More comfortable. Easier on his knees. He lays the letter beside him, face-down. Best to draw it out a bit, after all. It's not like he gets a new letter every day. Might as well make it last. _What, you thought Remus went on all those adventures alone? Thought his life stopped just because yours did? How self-centered you are. And how selfish, not even wanting to know the details of your friend's life._

_...He was just a shell. Not a person. Not anymore._

__

Oh, Remus, the Dementors just couldn't let you move on, could they?

_...But I had to kill you. Because thinking about you like that would have killed_ me _._

The constant tightness in Sirius' chest loosens almost imperceptibly.

_The Dark Mark over the Quidditch World Cup last night._

__

_The Dark Mark over the Quidditch World Cup last night._

__

_The Dark Mark over the Quidditch World Cup last night._

__

The Dark Mark. The Quidditch World Cup. The Dark Mark. The Quidditch World Cup. The Dark Mark. The Quidditch World Cup.

The World Cup. Where Harry is. Was. Harry. Harry, whose scar hurt just days ago.

“BUCKBEAK!!!” Sirius' roar is an affront to the Hippogriff, who is still nestled in his corner, no more than two feet from Sirius. When had he gone back inside the tent? What did he do with his letter? Where had the owl gone?

“Get your stuff together! We have to GO!” Buckbeak stands and trots outside, waiting for the hurricane that is Sirius to pass.

Throwing his few belongings into his bag, Sirius locates parchment and a quill, scrawling two letters, side by side. The first, to Harry. He needs him to stay safe. He needs him to know this is serious. He needs to be there for him. The second takes him longer to write, though it is markedly shorter.

_Moony,_

__

_I'm coming North immediately._

_Don't worry. I'm always safe._

 

_-Snuffles_

 


	12. Remus

He looks at the letter—if one can even call it that, hell, it’s only eleven words long— in disbelief. Sirius’ words are scrawled across a small bit of parchment, hastily torn from some larger sheet. He can just make out the corner of an inky thumbprint where Sirius must have been in too much of a hurry to let the ink dry properly. 

Remus traces his fingertips over the print—that tiny little indication that he’s been writing to a real person all this time—and bullies his thoughts into some semblance of order. In the frantic flurry running through his mind, one thought rises to the forefront, insisting on his attention.

_Was it something I said?_  

He gives a slightly hysterical laugh, pacing to the tiny window and back across the cottage to the tiny bed again. Running the hand not holding Sirius’ missive through his hair and down to pinch the bridge of his nose, trying very hard to ignore the slightly sickening and ever-so-familiar swooping in the pit of his stomach. 

_Sirius is coming here. I will see Sirius again. I will see Sirius again, hopefully when neither of us is in imminent danger of having his soul sucked out through his mouth or turning into a great homicidal Dark creature. Sirius will be here. With me._

_Oh, Merlin’s arsecrack._

But wait. Remus stops in his tracks, in the middle of the one room whose every corner he’s long ago memorized, and frowns to himself. Sirius cannot be coming here, because Sirius does not know where here is. As much as he’d like to believe that Sirius might just somehow know where to find Remus—as if by magic—he’s also a grown man and he’s seen too much of the world to think anymore that magic might work like that. 

No. Sirius will not come to this cottage. 

_I’m coming North_ , he’d said. Not _I’m coming to you, Remus, my beloved_. Not _only wait for me, my darling, and we shall be reunited as in the vomit-y, awkward halcyon days of our youth_. Just _I’m coming North._ And judging from the sketchy geographical details he’s been able to glean from Sirius’ letters, _North_ could be just about anywhere. 

Remus groans, hiding his face in both his hands, accidentally crushing Sirius’ letter into one nostril as he does. He sinks onto the rumpled bed, from which he’d been awakened too early by the soft but insistent scratching of the brown owl’s claws on the window. He’s always hated imprecision in language, and Sirius’ letter seems to be shooting for just that. But as he runs through the words that he’s already memorized, he attempts to read between the lines, desperately trying to identify where Sirius might be heading.

What had he said in his letter to provoke such a reaction? Sirius is—was?—sometimes rash, it’s true, but Remus can’t believe that he would risk exposure to the Ministry for something frivolous. Not with how tortured Sirius sounds when speaking about Azkaban. About the years he missed out on the life he might have had. 

Surely his mention of Adem wouldn’t have instigated Sirius’ flight? His abject apologies for being an insensitive prick might have merited some teasing, but certainly not a flight north with the threat of death hovering around every corner. What could he have said? 

His eyes alight, quite by accident, on the pile of old _Prophets_ sitting beside the river stone hearth, and it comes to him. The World Cup. He’d mentioned the Dark Mark being sent up over the World Cup. At the time he’d thought it was just idiots playing pranks, but in the days since, he’s begun to suspect it’s something more than that. Death Eaters? And if it’s actually Death Eaters, might Peter have had time to fold himself back into their ranks? Could he have been one of the idiots parading about the crowded campground in a hood and a mask?

Shit. 

That night in the Shrieking Shack comes back to him with terrible clarity. How furious Sirius had been. The snarl in his voice that had sounded so much less than human. The terrible absence of feeling in his eyes as he’d struggled to reach Peter. Remus had been sure, more sure than he’d been of anything else on that terrible, confusing night, that if Sirius had a chance to reach him, Peter Pettigrew would be as dead as it was humanly possible to make him. And he has no doubt now that, if Sirius could ever get his hands on Peter, he’d meet that same fate, plus all of the extra fury and resentment Sirius was inevitably building up while being forced to run and hide like… like a rat, or something. 

It still seems like an insane reason to risk one’s freedom by coming out of hiding, but Sirius has always been slightly insane, and Remus can’t for the life of him think of any other inducement that would prompt his friend to take his newly-reclaimed life in his hands this way. Unless… Harry? But that couldn’t be—Harry was safe in Surrey with his relatives, protected by nigh unbreakable enchantments. And besides, he’d only known Sirius as something other than his parents’ murderer for all of fifteen minutes before it had hit the fan… what were the odds that he’d trust the man enough to reach out to him over the summer? Slim, Remus thinks. 

Although… 

He bites back a snarl of frustration and levers himself off of the bed, resuming his well-trodden path from window to bed and back, his mind racing in a way it hasn’t done in years. What is it about Sirius’ reappearance in his life that makes Remus so… nervous? On-edge? Fidgety? Something uncomfortable and inconvenient, anyway, that seems to be making it impossible for him not to worry like a fretful old nan at a carnival. 

Whatever it is, Remus knows, with the same certainty he felt two weeks ago after reading Sirius’ angry accusations, that he will not be able to function in his right mind unless and until he knows where Sirius has gone and what his plan is, if he even has one. And since it’s not as though he can just pop round to Peter’s and wait for Sirius to show up and throttle him, and since the odds of Sirius showing up at the cottage and sweeping Remus into his arms during a thunderstorm seem very long indeed, he’ll just have to go to the place that everyone else in the wizarding world seems to think of as the fount of all knowledge and enlightenment, and hope the old man can give him something new to go on. 

Extinguishing the fire with a splash from his wand, Remus grabs his battered tweed jacket and, with nary a look back into the cell-like little room that has made up his entire world for months, turns on the crumbling, overgrown stoop and disappears with a quiet pop. 

******** 

The sweeping drive that leads to Hogwarts Castle has not changed at all since Remus last saw it, permitting himself one glance backwards at the place before hoisting his battered case onto the train and leaving, once again, for what he had felt certain was the final time. Since June, the great gnarled oaks have donned a thicker rustling of bright green leaves, casting dappled shadows over the well-groomed road. Since he left Hogwarts for London at the end of his seventh year, they are, perhaps, a little bigger. But, essentially, the trees and the road and the hulking stone structure of the castle up ahead are as they ever were; unmoved and implacable in the way of roots and stone and earth. 

Strange-- he thinks to himself-- the constancy of the physical world, when his own small existence is continuously rocked by such seemingly tiny details-- the shadows of the moon. A crisp October evening. Inky fingerprints on ragged scraps of parchment. 

Remus growls to himself, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes at the morbid turn of his thoughts. It's just another consequence of having Sirius back in his life, this increased awareness of his own tendency towards dour, mopey gloom. Before Sirius had returned, in all his blasé glory, there had been no one to point out to Remus how very... Hamlet-y… he can get if his thoughts are given free reign. Now, with each new glum musing, the voice in his head, letting out a bark-like laugh, scolds 

_Jesus Christ, Moony, you'd think it was you who spent half his life in Azkaban! Lighten up, for Merlin's sake!_  

But the habit of thirteen years is not so easily broken, and all this heightened awareness of his gloom has done is make Remus annoyed at his own dramatics. He tugs at the frayed collar of his jacket as he mounts the stone stairs that lead to the great main doors, pressing down his irritation in favor of mentally preparing himself for conversation with Dumbledore. 

The prospect isn't one he relishes. Remus has enough pride to still feel the shame of their last encounter keenly, when he'd been naked and sore and covered in dirt and scratches and who-knew-what-all, cowering behind a bush while Dumbledore had stood before him, cool and collected and unruffled, as usual. And he knows enough about himself that the prospect of facing that unassailable serenity right now, with a knot of worry for Sirius gnawing at his stomach, is particularly unpleasant. 

He raps hard, twice, on the age-smooth wood of the doors, which groan at him and say, in a voice that sounds like the forest: "Password?" 

"Aestate est optimus," replies Remus, grinning to himself at this professorial inside joke. The doors sigh a put-upon sigh and begin to creak open, just enough for Remus to turn sideways and slide through, snagging his shabby jacket on a splinter on his way. 

"So sorry to disturb you," he snaps, rolling his eyes and straightening the collar of his jacket as he turns toward the grand staircase. 

"Hmm. Yes." 

Wood does not, apparently, understand sarcasm. 

The castle smells of floor wax and furniture polish, and the worn stone of the stairs is dust-free and gleaming. It’s only September the 6th; the students haven’t yet been back long enough to render all the house elves summer toil moot, and the pine and wax and lemon of cleaning products sting his sensitive nose pleasantly.

It is a smell that sends him straight back to that first night at Hogwarts; the laughter and light of the Great Hall drifting out to them as he'd stood in a gaggle of terrified eleven-year-olds that had also contained James and Lily and Peter and Sirius, none of them yet indispensable to any other, all of them yet unhurt. 

Christ, but he's morbid. Shakespeare really would have a field day. 

He says a silent thank you to whatever force keeps him from meeting anyone on the way to Dumbledore's office, and is unsurprised to see the staircase already open and moving when he arrives there. Dumbledore probably knew he was here as soon as he appeared outside the castle gates. He breathes in deeply as the staircase takes him upward, and lets it out as the open door to Dumbledore's office slides into view. 

The headmasters on the walls are snoozing, a few blinking open curious eyes at him before nodding off once again. It must be very dull to be a portrait, Remus thinks, and is vaguely glad that he will never be anyone important enough to immortalize in this way. 

"Professor Lupin," comes Dumbledore's deep, smooth voice from somewhere to his left. "How good to see you. To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

The headmaster is as unchanged and changeless as the school he governs, looking the same now, clad in sweeping sapphire robes even in the heat of early September, silvery-white beard and hair smooth and long, as he did the first time Remus saw him: when Dumbledore had knocked on his parents door, greeted the ten-year-old Remus with a kind smile and a gentle handshake, and challenged him to a game of gobstones.

Dumbledore appears from around the open door of an ornately carved cabinet, his smile warm and his blue eyes leveled intently on Remus, who can feel the strain that must be evident as he smiles back and moves to shake Dumbledore's hand. 

"Not 'professor', Sir. Just Remus is fine." He hopes he doesn't sound bitter-- doesn't want to. Nothing to be done about the werewolf thing, and this is just a consequence of that. Entirely ineffectual to be bitter. Really. 

“Once a Hogwarts professor, always a Hogwarts professor, Mr. Lupin,” Dumbledore smiles at him. “The doors would not have let you in, otherwise.” 

Remus doesn’t know what to say to this, and is annoyed by the tiny loosening of some of the tightness in his chest. Trite platitude or not, Dumbledore’s words are reassuring, and his shoulders relax a bit as he smiles back at the headmaster. 

“Thank you, Sir.” 

“But I don’t think you’re here only to seek reassurance of your professorial status, are you?” Dumbledore asks, settling himself in one of the wingback armchairs beside the fireplace while motioning for Remus to take the other before quirking one silvery eyebrow and folding his hands beneath his chin. 

Right. Straight to the point, then. 

“I’ve been in contact with Sirius Black, Headmaster. Since early June, when school let out. I don’t know where he’s been, but it’s been somewhere my owls have been able to find him. In the last letter I sent him, I mentioned the attack at the World Cup.” 

Dumbledore nods, his blue eyes serious. “I take it Mr. Black found that event as good an inducement as any to make his return to our shores, then.” 

Remus inclines his head, watching Dumbledore for any sign of worry or anger or frustration, but Dumbledore doesn’t react beyond the first nod, and Remus feels an involuntary stab of annoyance. The man could make a killing at Muggle poker, that’s certain. 

“His note said he was coming north right away,” Remus supplies. “Took me awhile to figure out what might have worked him up so, but then I thought… and if Sirius thinks he can get to Peter by tracking down the Death Eaters…” Remus can hear the distress rising in his voice; can do nothing to stop it, and grips the arms of his chair until his knuckles turn white, trying to shove away the images of Sirius felled by a Killing Curse, Sirius swarmed by Dementors, Sirius blank and broken and staring. 

“Remus? Remus. Calm yourself.” Dumbledore’s voice is nearly composed, his tone hinting just barely at alarm. “I do not believe that Mr. Black’s intention in returning can have anything to do with Mr. Pettigrew, who has, by all accounts, done a bit of a runner, himself. He is not with the Death Eaters, in any case, and none of my contacts have seen a whisker of him since he fled the castle in June. No. If Sirius is indeed returning, it will be because of Harry.” 

Remus comes back to himself with a start. “Harry? Wasn’t he at his relatives’ house until school started? Why would Sirius be worried enough to come back here for Harry? Is he alright? He’s not been attacked, has he?” And once again the lead weight of panic begins to sink in his veins. 

“Harry is perfectly fine for the moment,” says Dumbledore kindly, reaching out a hand to pat Remus’ clenched fist. “He was with the Weasley family at the final match of the Quidditch World Cup, and was somewhat tangentially involved in the aftermath of the attack. He’s perfectly safe, I can assure you, and will likely not be returning to Surrey before next year’s summer holidays.” 

“Then why would Sirius feel the need to come back? If Harry’s fine, the best thing for the idiot to do is to stay far away from anywhere the Ministry might think to look for him!” 

“Sirius has been in contact with Harry, as well, as I imagine you might be aware,” says Dumbledore. “And it is not entirely outside the realm of possibility that the boy has confided something to him that has made Sirius think his presence required. If Mr. Black is anything now like the young man I knew, he will take his duties as godfather quite seriously, indeed.” 

Remus nods silently, feeling the resentment he’s been suppressing since June bubbling up inside him. He presses it ruthlessly to the back of his mind, letting his self-loathing at its very existence fill up the place it had occupied. 

_Don’t think that. Don’t._  

“As to Sirius’ current whereabouts,” continues Dumbledore, as Remus looks away, ashamed to meet the older man’s eyes. “I can hazard a guess that, as the new term has lately begun and Harry is once again at Hogwarts, he will want to be close on hand, should the boy have need of him. He will likely contact Aberforth, in that case, at which point I will be able to lend him what protection I can. Which is, if he stays in the vicinity of the school, quite formidable.” 

This does little to soothe Remus’ dread. “Headmaster… the way Sirius is now. I mean. Merlin knows he’s always been impulsive, but… coming back now seems like a death wish. He was never _suicidal_. Before. I mean, is it possible—" 

“Sirius Black has endured more sustained misery than perhaps any human alive,” intones Dumbledore, his eyes sad. “Twelve years in Azkaban, subjected every day and night to the pervasive influence of the Dementors. No one before has lived through such constant despair and kept his sanity. Of course, Sirius may be—" 

“Don’t you think I _know_ that?” Remus shouts, finding himself suddenly on his feet. “Don’t you think I’ve been through every _possible_ scenario, imagining how things were for him in there? I don’t _want_ him to be some cocky eighteen-year-old, Albus! I don’t want the stupid pranks and reckless stunts and pretending everything is just _fine_! But I don’t want him _dead_ , either, and if the Ministry gets wind of this… I don’t want to _lose_ him again! I want—"

Remus snaps his jaw shut, realizing he might have said too much. He turns his back to Dumbledore, gazing intently at the bookshelves that line the room and trying very hard to ignore the portraits, some of whom have gained decided interest in the proceedings. 

Dumbledore is silent for a long time, and the only sounds that Remus hears are the vague rustlings of Fawkes the phoenix where he sits on his perch, looking decidedly bedraggled, and his own labored breathing. Finally, he feels composed enough to turn to face the headmaster, and is stunned to see tears shimmering in the old man’s remarkable, clear eyes. 

“Sometimes,” murmurs Dumbledore, gazing at Remus, intent and unashamed, “the people we love change. They become new people, as we all do, over time, and we may not recognize those new people for who they once were to us.” 

He sniffs once and turns away, striding quietly to the great windows behind his desk and gazing out, hands clasped behind him, at the bright summer-covered grounds of Hogwarts. 

“All we can hope for,” he continues, and Remus can just glimpse the shining trail of a tear in the reflected sunlight on the weathered face, “is that our feeling for them is strong enough to keep them from becoming someone we cannot… _must_ not… love.” 

He turns back to Remus, his eyes dry now and his smile so sad that Remus feels his stomach hit his knees. There’s a part of him that wants to ask about this person he can see reflected in the old man’s grief, and there’s a part of him that wants to forget the pain he sees in Dumbledore’s face—forget that expression and bury it so far in the depths of his mind that there will never be hope of its recovery. He stays silent, unsure of what to say, but feeling as though he should say something to comfort the usually so placid headmaster. 

Before Remus can unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, Dumbledore has given himself a slight shake, and the serene, kindly mask has once again dropped into place. 

“Sirius will need your friendship in order to overcome what has been done to him. He will need your steadiness and your strength. But you must not allow him to fill your thoughts so completely that there is no room for yourself there. That way lies madness. And, if you ask me, we’ll soon have quite enough of that to go around.” 

“What do you mean, Sir?” Remus is relieved that Dumbledore has changed the subject, as the thought of being asked to comfort this giant among wizards had made him feel impossibly small and inadequate to the task. 

“Things are stirring again, Remus,” sighs Dumbledore, his voice regretful and resigned. “I fear that we’ll soon have to contend with challenges much greater than the odd act of terrorism at a sporting event.” 

Remus thinks of the Dark Mark, floating in newsprint above burning tents. He remembers it glowing green and bright over the wreckage of the McKinnons’ house. The twisted, agonized bodies of Cruciatus victims and the torn flesh of werewolf bites and the crumbling walls of a stone cottage in Godric’s Hollow. Abandoned socks flung carelessly over his mantelpiece and sleep-dented pillows that still smelled of dog and cheap Muggle shampoo. 

“What can I do.” It doesn’t come out as a question, but as a statement. Remus can feel the resolve hardening in his chest as he looks at Dumbledore, eyes and breath both steady as he waits for the reply. 

_It will not happen again. It will not. I won’t let it. Not again._  

Dumbledore regards him impassively, his long fingers steepled beneath his chin as he surveys Remus’ set jaw, his squared shoulders. 

“The work that lies ahead will not be easy,” he muses. “It will be dangerous, and thankless, and will very likely prove fatal to most of us before the end is come. You’ve lost so much in your life already for one so young. Might it not be wiser to—" 

“I don’t give a fuck about wiser,” Remus interrupts, calm and certain still. “The things I’ve lost don’t begin to compare to what we’ve all got to lose. I’m not a coward, Albus, and I’ll find a way to fight whether you agree to let me or not. I’m not some tragic kid anymore who needs you to hide him away in a shack somewhere.  You can’t plant a tree over this one and hope that’ll fix the problem. I’m going to do all I can to fight these ‘challenges’ of yours, and if you plan to stop me, you can take your _formidable_ protection and shove it straight up your—" 

“Actually,” Dumbledore cuts in, looking both thoughtful and challenging as he levels his blue gaze on Remus, “I think I may have a task that might suit you very well.”

 

 


	13. Sirius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. 
> 
> Umm... what can we say? Thought those of you who are still reading deserved a quicker chapter update than it says on the tin, for sticking with it even during our unintended hiatus. 
> 
> I (mmolloy) moved from the western United States to London in early September, and it turns out that I got super busy and wasn't updating as I should. earthwitch hadn't been in charge of posting new chapters, so that was entirely my bad. Woops!
> 
> I hope the double-update will be sort of worth the wait, and we promise to be a little better about posting on time from here on in, although there's no accounting for the little accidents of fate, as our heroes would probably attest. :-) 
> 
> Just so you all know: this is a WIP, but only because we haven't written it all out yet. We know where the story ends, what happens in the meantime, and we've even got several of the biggest, most important conversations all mapped out almost line by line. We're both busy people, but this is a really wonderful way that we get to relax and 'play pretend' together (even though we're allegedly too old for such things... bah.) and it's very important to us. It might not be the most perfectly streamlined reading experience, but I promise that it WILL get to that ending, which won't be happy, per se... but you can't blame us for that. Blame Jo. It's her sandbox, after all. :-) 
> 
> Please enjoy your conciliatory bonus chapter!

The door creaks open slowly, allowing room for a slight, hunched wizard to sidle inside before the weight of the door slams it shut again, very nearly taking the old man with it, but deciding at the last moment to settle for merely stealing the hem of his cloak instead.

Shuffling up to the bar, the man rests his elbows on the counter, giving the bartender a crisp nod. “Morning, mate. How about a double firewhiskey to start then, eh?”

The bartender nods, reluctantly stopping his task, which consists, apparently, of picking up a glass from one stack of dishes, wiping it once with an ominously grey rag, and setting it in a second stack, which looks no different from the first.

The man at the counter picks up the firewhiskey set before him, eyes it once with a look of respect bordering on reverence, and downs the entire contents with a gulp of satisfaction. “Ahh,” he sighs, setting the glass back down slowly, as if the world has just become more benevolent, allowing people the gift of time, and the luxury of wasting it. “There. Now me day can start.” The man slaps his palms down on the counter and rolls his shoulders experimentally forward and backward, as though surprised to find himself existing inside this particular body.

The bartender has returned to his task of wiping glasses, which – the old man notices without judgment – appears to be taken for washing them, as he is now returning the cups in the second stack to the shelves lining the back wall.

“So, Ab, how's it been this morning? Any interesting folk in? Any excitement to kick off the week, eh?”

Ab returns one, two, three separate glasses to the shelves and the old man has just about given up on getting a reply when Ab looks around the nearly empty pub, lifts one shoulder, and says, “ 'Bout like this.”

Encouraged by such an enthusiastic response, the old man smacks his lips twice, drums his fingers on the counter, and continues. “Ah well, it's still early, innit though? Plenty o' time for the excitement to come. Plenty o' time. Though yeh might be hopin' for just the opposite, eh? But where's the fun in that, I say?”

But Ab has already resumed his wiping, stacking, and re-shelving endeavor, back turned to his patron, quite evidently displeased with this loquacious turn of events. Undeterred, the old man continues on with his stream of consciousness. His mother once told him that no human - wizard or Muggle - is naturally laconic. All they need is a bit of friendly prodding. Once or twice Ab has given the old man reason to doubt the truth in his mother's philosophy, but the doubt never seems to take hold.

“Mmmhmm. Did yeh meet young Fergus yet? Pippins' new clerk? Hasn't come in here yet, eh? Ha! I'll tell yeh. He's been loyal to The Three Broomsticks since his first spiced mead. Or rather, the legs that brought him his first spiced mead! Oh ho! I tell yeh what. Little Fergus was outside Rosmerta's just this morning, trying to help her carry in her sherry delivery. Couldn' even lift the box though, could he? Ha! Oh, go on then, a bit of the Daisyroot, eh?”

It takes Ab a moment to realize the old man is placing an order, and another moment after that to care. Ab fills the cup carelessly, slopping the draught over the edges, and turns his back once more, this time moving each bottle of Butterbeer from a cupboard on his left to a cupboard on his right, for no particular reason the old man can discern.

“Hogwarts jus' started up again. But course, yeh know that, eh? You'll have those two red-headed blokes in here again, stirring up all kinds of trouble, making this place louder than the dogs. Speaking of which, yeh won' believe what I saw this mornin'. An' just outside yer pub too! Great big dog, covered in dust. 'Nother stray, o' course. But that's not the odd bit. This dog, I'll tell yeh, had its front paws on one o' yer windows! Lookin' right in, starin', like. Strange, innit? So I told it to shoo, and it jus' stared at me, straight in the eye, before it turned an' walked away, slowly, lookin' proud, like it was a king or somethin'. I dunno. Not like other strays. Gave me the willies, it did.”

If the old man were paying attention, he would notice that Ab is no longer re-shelving Butterbeer. That he has turned around and is peering out his grimy windows. That a crease between his eyebrows is growing deeper. But the old man isn't paying attention.

“So that's when I told me wife, no more strays. Period. I don't care how calm they seem at the start. Well, she didn't like that, oh no.”

Ab coughs, pulling the old man from his reverie. “Eh, look there, it's almost 9 o' clock. You better get on down to the Post. Can't be late again, not after last week.”

The old man jumps out of his seat as if bitten. “Blimey! Thanks Ab, always looking out for me, yeh are. Cheers!” And he rushes out the door without settling his tab.

Sighing, Ab makes himself wait a few tense moments before heading back into the kitchen and sticking his head out of the door leading to the alley behind the pub. He whistles one low note, squinting up and down the bleak cobblestone path. In just moments, he hears the soft pattering of paw on stone before the silhouette of a rather intimidatingly large black dog takes shape in the dimness. “Inside,” he hisses, “and straight up the stairs.”

At the top of the stairs, the dog sits stiffly in front of a weathered walnut rocking chair. Ab enters the room, locking the door and peering out each window before pulling the curtains closed. Turning back to the dog before him, he says, “Fer christ' sake, Sirius, you can stop bein’ a dog now.” And before Ab can settle into his seat, a man stands where moments before sat a dog. Thin and worn, his sharply cut shoulders and jaw give the distinct impression of having once been haughty, or elegant, or handsome, or really anything other than hunched and drooping, which is all anyone could say for them now.

“Thank you, Aberforth. Again,” Sirius croaks, swallowing several times to moisten his throat before continuing. “Really. I'm sorry to be coming here. I know I said I wouldn't bother you again, and I don't mean to be putting the pub at risk.”

“Get worse than the likes of you in here.”

Sirius lets out a bark of incredulity. Although not known for its upstanding clientèle, Sirius finds it hard to believe that he'd ever stumble across another notorious mass murderer or Azkaban escapee in The Hogs Head, even at the height of its depravity.

“Your lies are kinder than I remember, Ab. You've gone soft since I've been away.” He clears his throat, looking uncomfortable. “I'm here because I need help. If you can. I came back, because Harry told me something. He told me...something that makes me think things are only going to get worse. I need to be near him. He's at Hogwarts.” The words stop on Sirius' lips. How many times has he said that exact phrase? One thousand? Two thousand? More? They transport him. No longer are Aberforth's grey beard and blue eyes before him. He sees only black bars, a cracked stone floor, the flash of a rat's tail, a severed finger, hooded cloaks, vacant eyes, the crash of waves on rock.

“Sirius!” Aberforth's eyes are wide, and he has gotten out of his chair and taken a few tentative steps towards him. Sirius presses his fingers to his temples and then rubs his eyes. He attempts to force out a laugh, but it comes out closer to a single, solitary sob.

“I'm fine, Ab. Sorry. Got distracted. I just mean...Harry. He's going to school at Hogwarts. That's where he is now. And I have to be close by. In case he needs me. And I can't exactly be on school grounds. I figured somewhere around Hogsmeade is best.” He hasn't asked Aberforth a question, but his face is waiting for an answer.

“How kind. You want to be here for your godson. Lend him a hand if he needs you, eh? Go on up to the school if someone mistreats him? Invite him to your hideout on holiday? Make sure he doesn't sneak out of bounds and get into trouble? Or make sure that he _does_? What good are doing by risking your life here, Sirius? What does _Harry_ have to gain?” Aberforth's gruff voice is low and non-accusatory, but his words cut Sirius just the same.

“I don't know, Aberforth. What good are _you_ doing, keeping all the local drunks liquored up and raising an army of goats, huh?” Sirius' voice is a snarl leaning precariously towards a bite.

“I'm not tryin' to do any good, Sirius. Don't reckon it makes a difference, anyhow.”

The sound Sirius makes is like growl, or a whine, or the beginning of a howl. If it came out of a dog, Aberforth would back away. Coming out of a man, he merely raises his eyebrows. The gesture is enough to make Sirius see himself out of Ab's eyes: friendless, lost, desperate. More dog than human. More dead than alive. He feels the heat rush into his face, feels his pulse quicken. He wants this conversation to be over. He wants to be alone. He wants the world to stop moving and let him catch up.

“I don't know how I'll help Harry, I don't know whether he'll need help or if he'll even tell me about it when he does. But I know I can help him here better than where I was. The boy has no parents, Ab, no one to look out for him, and if he's anything like James, anything at all, he'll be getting into all sorts of trouble. He needs...someone. And I'm his godfather,” he finishes defiantly, as if daring someone to try to take this role from him.

“You are indeed,” Aberforth sighs, shaking his head. “Well, if you won't be changing your mind, at least you can not be an idiot about it. Don't go getting yourself killed. Last thing he needs.” Sighing again, Aberforth pauses and seems to come to a decision. “It wouldn't be so stupid to keep living as a dog, you know. I know a local witch who loves to take in strays. You'd eat well and sleep inside, and it'd be easy to get the news. Couldn't bring that bird beast of yours though.”

Sirius' stomach rumbles at the thought of regular meals, and his joints ache at the offer of sleeping inside. Maybe even on a cushion. By a fire. But he shakes his head. “Buckbeak stays with me.”

“Can't say I'm surprised. Speaking of which, where is the beast anyway?” Aberforth peers around Sirius, as if he had perhaps been hiding the Hippogriff behind him the entire time and would only just now bring him out to say hello.

“I couldn't bring him here, could I? He's safe. I hid him in the Shrieking Shack for now. No one will find him there.”

“The Shrieking Shack?” Aberforth's gaze is as unblinking and penetrating as his brother's. “Feeling sentimental?”

Sirius opens his mouth to argue, or maybe agree, or perhaps ask him what, exactly, he means by that. But Aberforth, immediately regretting his unintentional invitation for gratuitous conversation, waves his hand dismissively. “Nevermind that. 'S no matter.”

Sirius wants desperately to counter that, in fact, he _does_ mind that, and it _does_ matter. But he can't imagine where the conversation could possibly go from there. He's made a number of questionable and impulsive decisions of late, but pouring his heart out to Aberforth Dumbledore seems neither wise nor satisfying.

“It was the only place big enough, Ab, that's all. Have you got other ideas? I'll stay anywhere. I don't care. As long as Buckbeak and I have a chance of staying hidden, I don't care about anything else.”

“Plenty of empty cottages 'round Hogsmeade, but you'll have no luck with those. Too many pranksters messing about. We could set you up real comfortable a ways farther off, but if you won't budge from here, there's only one place I reckon you won't be found. Cave. Up in the mountain. Years ago, my goat Tann ran off. I found her in that cave. All my time in Hogsmeade, never once heard anyone mention a cave in the hills. You'll be safe there. Albus already set up the protective enchantments for you.”

“What?!” Sirius yelps. “Albus already? But how? How did he know...?”

“My brother has a habit of making people _useful_ , Sirius. Bugger if I know how gets his information.”

Again, Sirius is caught between wanting to know everything – every word, every gesture, every prolonged silence or shake of the head that had been shared between the two brothers – and simultaneously yearning for nothing. No more words, no more confusion, no more sensations rippling through his body for him to decode.

Body quivering with the strain of holding his mind, and body, and thoughts in one semi-cohesive entity, Sirius stands. “Thank you. I'll stay there. I'll go right away.” He is already turning away, already on the edge of transformation, already pushing back his human mind and calling forth his far more benign dog consciousness.

“I'll get Tann, she'll take you there. Sirius –” Aberforth's voice, which has gone from mildly cross to undeniably urgent, stops Sirius' transformation. Sirius holds his body in limbo, not fully human and not yet canine, but he does not turn around. “Sirius, I know it's not easy. Bein' back. But you need to pull yourself together. You won't be a lick of help to Harry like this.”

********

When Sirius enters the cave, his first reaction is that it's not unlike other caves he's lived in, and the thought initially fills him with a buoyancy some might call _hope_. The cave sighs with comfortable familiarity. Of course, in those times, he had a cave-mate who insisted on decorating the walls with maps, photos, and tattered pieces of fabric he claimed were curtains (Sirius always questioned the functionality of curtains in a place with no windows, but James only scoffed, as if such an inquiry deserved no response). Somehow, with his eternal snoring and penchant for leaving pants in every available nook and crevice, James managed to turn a cave into a home. It's the sort of magic they don't teach at Hogwarts. The art of taking the shell of a place and infusing it with laughter and jokes, warmth and stability. A bit of magic Sirius has yet to master. Maybe you have to grow up with it, or maybe just not spend twelve years in Azkaban. Either way, Sirius is terribly deficient.

He looks over at Buckbeak, who hovers near the entrance, shifting from foot to foot. “Welcome to our new palace, Buckbeak. Would you prefer the North or South wing?” Buckbeak continues with his shifting, turning his head from side to side to survey their new premises. “I'd carry you over the threshold, but I'm afraid I'm not up to the task. It's no dig at your weight, my darling, I'm just not the strapping young lad I once was.”

At this, Buckbeak trots in, finds the one patch of sunlight streaming through a crack in the ceiling, and curls up on the ground. He's asleep within moments. Sirius watches him, shaking his head. Even Buckbeak can take a shelter and make it a home.

Tossing his bag to the ground, Sirius sits on the uneven cave floor, wincing as a bit of rock burrows into his skin. He fights the urge to transform. In dog form, this floor would be only a mild discomfort. But he's trying not to spend more than half his day as Padfoot, a goal which is proving to be humiliatingly difficult. Again, Aberforth's voice cuts into his mind. _You need to pull yourself together. You won't be a lick of help to Harry like this._

Sirius rests his forehead on his knees. He thinks of the night he broke into the Gryffindor common room. Wild and unthinking; brimming with hatred and revenge. He remembers the night in the Shrieking Shack. Seeing Remus again. For the first time in nearly thirteen years, having someone believe him. Listen to him. And talking to Harry and his friends – his loyal, brave friends. People who saw in him someone capable of mercy, of compassion. Wanting so badly to be that person. Believing that he could be.

Pulling out his small stack of letters and parchment, Sirius thumbs through them, re-reading passages he has long since memorized. Then he begins to write.

_Dear Moony,_

__

_Thanks for your letter. It was really – well, it was really kind, Moony. And Merlin knows I didn't deserve it. Things have been...not easy. Ha! Who would've thought, eh? I'm sorry for your friend Adem. Sorry you witnessed it. He was lucky to have you there though. Doesn't matter that you couldn't save him – no one could. It's like with dying, you know? It's worse if it happens alone, even if it can't be stopped. Having someone with you makes it real. Makes it matter. Tree falls in the woods – that old bullshit._

_I came North, Moony._

_~~Where are you? Are you near~~ _

_I'm not far from where I saw you last. I had to come back. Harry told me something, and I thought he needed me. I thought maybe I could help him, be here for him. But Moony, how did I think I could possibly help him, when I can't even participate in a coherent conversation myself? When I can't remember whether I've been traveling north for one week or ten. When I forget whether I'm in dog form or human. When every last atom in my body is hurtling away from me, like I'm a goddamn Muggle firework, and everyone can tell. And by everyone, of course, I mean our friendly neighborhood goat whisperer and my tender beaky lover._

_How did I think I could offer Harry anything he didn't already have? All I can do is bring more chaos into his life. How do you do it, Moony? Even when your insides are a whorling sea of anxiety and self-made hysteria, your outsides may as well be a placid lake. You're like the Black Lake, somehow hiding the Giant Squid and all those bloody Merpeople beneath its deceivingly tranquil surface. What is your trick? How are you so reliable? So steady? Such a good advice-giver? Were you born this way? Did your parents sit you down for daily dependability and sanity lessons? In all seriousness (not joking, I solemnly swear!) Moony, how are you so kind and composed and goddamn mentor-y, even after all you've been through?_

_Dumbledore knew I was coming north, Moony. How did he know? Were you here? Did you tell him? I'm not mad. Curious, though._

__

_I hope you're safe._

 

_-Pads_

 


	14. Remus

The echoes of Remus’ boots on the crumbling, rust stained concrete are too loud in his own ears. Damp grey walls streaked with mildew and graffiti enclose him on all four sides, and he fancies his human ears almost twitch, so intently does he listen for any sound not of his own making.

He steps carefully around the remains of a concrete pillar, the rough edges charred black, the rebar a twisted and melted-looking nest in the midst of the toppled structure. His nose twitches. No smell of residual gunpowder. No gasoline. Only a thin, hot metallic edge in the air. Magic, then, almost certainly.

He’s getting closer.

He grips his wand a little more firmly, taking just a moment to risk closing his eyes—blocking out the dank, echoing emptiness of the abandoned factory floor—and inhaling deeply. Beneath the heady mix of mildew and rubbish and old vomit and piss that’s grown all too familiar to Remus after more than a week of skulking through similarly charming venues, he can detect the faint scent of thick, wet fur and bloody, rotting meat.

He winces, opening his eyes and moving unconsciously in the direction from which the smell is strongest, into the dim shadows that sink deeper into the factory to his right. 

Dumbledore had sat him down on that afternoon at the beginning of September and laid out this mission before him so quickly and matter-of-factly that Remus almost hadn’t had time to trade his righteous indignation for surprise. Remus was, Dumbledore had said, perfectly suited to the task, and had sat patiently, one white eyebrow quirked over level blue eyes, while Remus mentally catalogued all the ways he had disagreed with that assessment.

In the end, though, all Dumbledore had to do was off-handedly mention the three new werewolf bites that had been reported since July, and Remus knew that he couldn’t say no. Two of the victims were under the age of ten… it seemed as though Greyback had acquired a type in the years since he’d ruined any chance Remus might have once had at normalcy.

And so, if he couldn’t be normal—and he _couldn’t_ be normal, as had been well established through his thirty-odd years of life—then he’d at least do his damndest to ensure that no one _else’s_ chance at it was taken from them.

So here he is, in this dark, depressing hole somewhere on the Liverpool waterfront, his senses—though he is still human and the moon is just a waxing crescent in the invisible sky—wolfish and merciless and intently focused on finding his prey.

He fancies that the wolf may even be visible in his face. He can’t actually check—hasn’t seen a mirror in several weeks—but the thought nevertheless causes a sick blend of satisfaction and dread to settle in his stomach.

On the one hand, he has spent his life resolutely avoiding the animal instincts he’s buried so far within his brain. Being obstinately, _tenaciously_ civilized until he can no longer control himself each month. Overcompensating, it might be said, for the creature that shares his bones.

But on the other hand… how lovely, how freeing it is to simply… _not_. To give up. Give in. Be the thing that he’s always insisted he is not, despite all evidence to the contrary. 

And how… pleasant, the thought of finding the… man? Creature? _Thing_. who made him this way in the first place. The imagined sensation of teeth ripping into flesh, tearing through skin and being coated in hot, thick blood brings a rush of saliva to Remus’ mouth, and he cannot help the feral grin he can feel stretching over his face as he stalks Greyback further into the bowels of this fetid Muggle ruin.

He will kill him when he finds him.

There is no hesitation about this fact in Remus’ increasingly fragmented thoughts.

The smell of wolf and blood is getting stronger, and he slows his steps, his eyes twitching and his ears pricked for any sign that he is not alone. Keeping to the shadows, he follows the scent up through the factory floors that are littered here and there with hulking old-fashioned manufacturing machines. He gives these a wide berth, his raw instincts balking at their complicated shadows.

He finally comes to what looks to have once been some sort of manager’s office, the smoked glass of it’s door cracked and filthy but somehow still mainly intact. The door hangs mostly closed, the locking mechanism splintered away as though kicked in, but someone has made an effort to keep the place relatively private. There is a board lodged up under the dangling doorknob, and when Remus kicks it aside, suddenly impatient for something to change after a week of silent sneaking, the door creaks open to slowly reveal the room.

A wave of that rich, decaying musty sweetness rolls over Remus, making his human eyes water and his wolfish mind balk at the undeniable _alpha_ in that scent. 

The part of his mind that is still given over to books and comfort and tea and sense screams out that this is a spectacularly bad idea with no redeeming aspects to it whatsoever, regardless of how many spreadsheets one might theoretically make or contemplative hours one could hypothetically spend. Just. Not a good idea. Not at all.

That part is quickly silenced as the wolf surges to the forefront of the Remus’ mind with a snarl of defiance, and suddenly he can do nothing but slink low and wary into the room, teeth bared and hackles raised and blood humming with the thrill of challenge.

The room is empty.

The only light comes from the high, broad windows that look out over the dreary, rain soaked rooftops of Liverpool. There is a slumped, threadbare sofa along with the remains of a fire in the old stone hearth, and filthy, rank-smelling blankets spill off the edges of an ancient office chair whose springs are poking through the upholstery. The desk and filing cabinets have been crowded on either side of the doorway, presumably to limit the escape options of anyone who might be stupid enough to trespass here. Like Remus, for instance.

It’s a den, certainly. And one that has seen recent use. Below the cloying scent of alpha that he recognizes as Greyback, he can detect at least one—no, two—more distinct scent signatures, weaker and more beta than the first but no less wild for that.

The man is beating frantically at the edges of Remus’ consciousness, his voice wavering slightly in a panic that he’s doing his level best to suppress into wholesome, familiar reason.

_Three werewolves. Three crazy, feral werewolves who have not spent their lives trying to be human beings. Who will have no qualms whatever about killing you, and will probably not want to make it quick._

The wolf snarls at him, snapping threatening jaws, his muscles tensed for battle.

_Rip. Tear. Defeat. Conquer. Kill._

But there is no movement save his own. The den is deserted, the scents of pack fresh but fading, and the wolf growls low in his throat—the frustration of battle denied. They have not been here for something like ten hours, and if they are to return, the human in him knows it would be better not to be waiting, even as the wolf salivates at the thought of the inevitable fight.

The floor is littered with dented, empty cans of beans and the gnawed remains of small creatures that Remus doesn’t want to examine too closely. Everything looks to have been abandoned quickly, not that these werewolves would give a great deal of thought to good housekeeping, Remus thinks ruefully.

The wolf in his mind does not like having the door at his back, and he finds himself constantly twitching around to check that he is really still alone. It makes examining the room for leads a much more challenging proposition, and it takes him the better part of an hour to sweep the small space for any clue that might point him in the direction of where Greyback is now. 

There is nothing. Nothing, anyway, that might give him a definitive lead to follow. The trail he’s been following for more than three weeks ends in this dingy, disgusting little room and he has no idea where he might go to pick it back up.

Frustration rises up in Remus' throat like vomit, but comes out of him in a sort of inhuman roaring snarl. Unable to leash the fury that has finally found its outlet, he slams his fists into filing cabinets until they dent, kicks at the floor and at the dingy walls, tears great chunks out of the corpse of the couch and the mildewed upholstery and finally slams his head ineffectually against the thick, dirty glass of the door that was his last hope, screaming until his throat is hoarse.

He sinks down against one of the banged-up cabinets, curling in on himself with his knees to his chin and his hands fisted violently in his hair. The fury is gone and in its place is nothing but a hollow sort of defeated loneliness mixed with the sinking dread that has been weighing him down since the wolf first spoke to him-- quite coherently-- in Blackpool a week ago.

********

_He'd been tracking Greyback for around two weeks, at that point, from the day that Dumbledore had told him of the werewolf's last confirmed location, shaken his hand, and wished him luck. He'd picked up the sickening, wrong scent of unwashed human and dirty wolf near Adelstone in London and had followed it through abandoned factories and derelict buildings in all the industrial centers of southern England._

_It had been lonely, of course, but Remus was used to lonely. And the tiny, idealistic part of him that had not been quashed into silence through more than a decade of living his life by Murphy’s Law had swelled up with energetic zeal at doing a job that actually meant something—that would make the world demonstrably better in a way that few people ever got to accomplish. The spark of satisfaction that he’d only ever found in teaching took up residence in his chest again, and he’d known he’d do anything to keep it there._

_And so he’d thrown himself into the tracking, following a fragmented trail of unsolved break-ins and mysterious police reports and hysterical stories related to him by little old women in coffee shops. He scoured newspapers for any unexplained disappearances and wild rumors of wolf-men skulking around the edges of the little communities that rimmed all the cities of southern England._

_It was…_ fun _. Putting together the little pieces of a puzzle that no one else could crack. It felt a bit like being Sherlock Holmes in the battered old copy of_ The Hound of the Baskervilles _that Sirius had once given him as a joke._

_And when he’d exhausted his human resources—when the wolf-men turned out to be exceptionally hairy locals or the unexplained disappearances ended in the revelation of affairs or spontaneous vacations—he could close his eyes, breathe in deep, and call the wolf to the surface for help._

_But after awhile, it just became easier to hunt. Sherlock Holmes may have been able to track Greyback’s movements solely through the use of pilfered newspapers and gossip, but as he crumpled up yet another useless copy of the Blackpool Gazette, something growling at the back of Remus’ mind whispered that he did not have to. That this would go_ faster _if he_ didn’t. _And so he’d tossed the newspaper aside, found himself a quiet corner of a shadowy alleyway, and cautiously called to the beast in his mind._

_And it had worked. Beautifully. When he used the senses that he so often tried to forget he had the use of, he had to admit that the tracking went faster. As he let the slack out on the tight mental leash that kept the wolf in check, the growing strength of Greyback’s sickening scent was confirmation enough. He was catching up, and quickly._

_He had followed the scent—growing in complexity the longer he allowed himself to track it—through the ruins and mouldering, neglected mistakes that society would just as soon forget. Abandoned docks and rotting-out gasworks and factories that played host to the rats and cockroaches and humans that had been forgotten, too._

_Twice he came upon a wide stain of blackened blood and breathed a sigh of relief that it appeared Greyback’s victims had died before learning the awful truth of what would have come next._

_But the wolf had shivered in something like delight at the stench of the lately-spilled blood, and the dread in Remus’ stomach settled more heavily. The man he was protested weakly against the beast who lived within him, his voice fading in and out like faulty radio signal as the blood-smell brought drool to his human lips._

_If Remus later went to a butcher’s shop late at night to procure several pounds of steak that never saw the heat of a fire… well. No one needed to know about that._

********

And it had all been for nothing. Here he is, in yet another miserable hole, far away from tea and books and comfort and home, with nothing to show for it but the bleeding of his torn fingernails and the fierce pounding in this head from where he’s slammed it against the door. No luck. No Greyback. And no way of finding him. Just pain and anger and the feeling of his tenuous grip on humanity slipping inexorably through his bleeding hands.

The wolf growls resentfully. It has very little patience for Remus’ Jekyll-and-Hyde melodrama, and while its blood still boils from the long-anticipated battle it has been denied, the man knows better than to bait it with miserable moping. Instead, he crawls into the cleanest corner he can find and curls up on himself in a dejected ball, licking pathetically at the blood at his knuckles and focusing hard on calming the wolf enough to sleep.

It does not calm right away, but paces away in his mind, taking up so much more space there than it ever has before. Snarling and twitching in hot-blooded frustration, it nevertheless settles enough after long hours to lie down and close its eyes, not curled up in a tight ball, like Remus the man is, but sprawled gloatingly, lazily, across the great swaths of their shared mind that it has claimed for its own.

 And they sleep the uneasy sleep of two creatures in one body as the watery light of the Liverpool sunset darkens steadily into a starless night.

********

The owl very nearly misses being torn wing from wing.

With an indignant squawk edged in panic, the large bird flaps up into the rafters of the abandoned office just in time to escape the snapping jaws and very human teeth of the wild-eyed man it had been unceremoniously pecking just moments before. If not for the letter still tied to its scaly leg, it would already be winging its way far from the unnatural creature whose muddled, blurry smell is making it nervous even from this distance.

Below, Remus fights hard to get his heart back under control, the sting of the bird’s beak on his neck barely noticeable through the haze of red adrenaline flickering at the corners of his vision. The wolf is awake and snarling, huge in Remus’ mind while he cowers behind it—terrified and annoyed at the same time by how comforting it is to not be in charge, for once.

It is the sight of the letter that snaps him back into his human senses. The man shoulders his way to the front of Remus’ consciousness, ignoring the warning, territorial rumble from the wolf as he shoves it off and stands shakily, reaching out for the bird above him with as much humanity as he can muster.

“Sorry,” he rasps, his throat feeling torn up and rough from all the screaming of the night previous. “Startled me, is all. You can come down now, though. I promise it’s safe.”

The bird looks skeptical, and Remus doesn’t blame it. The wolf is pacing just behind his eyes, and he can feel the tension in his muscles that is not entirely under his control. But he softens his stance as much as he is able, and holds out one arm in a clearly human invitation.

The owl is humming with tension as it lands on his arm and sticks out its leg, round yellow eyes fixed intently on Remus’ face as if searching for any hint that it is about to become breakfast. Remus detaches the letter quickly, wanting to send the bird on its way before the salivating wolf gains advantage over the man again. He clicks at it reassuringly as he swings his arm upward and the owl spreads its wings and is gone.

The letter is written on the same cheap, surreptitiously-obtained paper that has characterized all of Sirius’ previous communications. The ink that spells his name on its outside has smeared slightly from where the owl had flown through rain.

 _North_ , Sirius had said. _North_.

He traces the familiar elegant angles of Sirius’ handwriting: the spiky points of the R and the looping extravagance of the L that mark this letter as having been written to him.

 _Him_.

Remus Lupin.

The wolf whines softly, scenting the air as if nervous.

Remus ignores it, and opens the letter carefully. His fingers feel clumsy—as though unused to anything so delicate as human communication—but he manages to extract the pages of that same spiking, looping writing without ripping them, as he can feel the wolf wanting him to do.

It takes him several minutes to puzzle out the meanings behind the collection of shapes that covers the page. Several minutes where each word is detached from its meaning and floating around in his head with no strings to connect them. It’s as though he’s looking at Mayan, or Babylonian, and the thought fills him with such panic that it pushes the pacing wolf back further, the man in him completely oblivious to its warning snarls as he searches for the strings that will connect the words back to their meanings.

As the words Sirius has written become clearer, Remus’ head does, too. The fog of bitter anger and animal instinct gives way to compassion that swells his heart at Sirius’ blatantly legible pain. The frustration and self-doubt that he can feel seeping in at the edges of Sirius’ words, the entirely natural fear of losing himself after years spent never being really sure of who he was. Remus wants to go to him (he’s in Scotland, he’s in Scotland, _they’re on the same goddamn island…_ ) and pull Sirius to him and explain that his chaos is like a nebula that is the birthplace of stars: absolutely wild and beautiful and essential.

And he can feel his blood freezing up as he reads the earnest, heartfelt words of admiration that he’s done nothing to deserve. The soft wonder in Sirius’ tone when he imagines this kind, gentle, wise man who doesn’t exist—who is only Remus, who is covered in blood and grime and filth and fighting day by day to keep himself sane, to keep himself human, let alone calm and collected and kind. Who is losing ground each day to the animal that shares his bones until one day he will lose himself entirely to the wolf and will become the very thing he’s hunting.

And he will disappear into the unwanted—into the forgotten and the ignored, and Sirius will know, then, that he’d been wrong about Remus all along. 

But no.

_No._

The wolf is tense in his mind, muscles poised to spring, as though waiting for the man to make a sudden movement so that it can tear out his human throat and finish the battle between them once and for all.

 _Get out_ , Remus thinks at it furiously, the man charging forward to challenge the beast, herding it backward, reclaiming the territory of his own mind. _Stay back. You’ve done your worst; no more._

The wolf snaps its powerful jaws at the man in his head, dancing forward to nip at him and then retreating when Remus comes on, undeterred.

 _I am the Black Lake_ , intones Remus, like an incantation. _I am calm, I am placid, I am human. I contain me. You are not me. You cannot have me. I am the Lake. I am kind and composed and goddamn mentor-y. Sirius says so. Get back._

_Get back._

And, though it snaps and snarls and glares all the while, the wolf does; slinking back further into the isolated shadows in his mind that it has inhabited since Remus was a child.

Remus collapses against one of the dented filing cabinets, sweating and panting as though he’s just run for miles. But his head is clear. Clearer than it's been for almost a month, and he’s suddenly aware of the fact that he’s absolutely, unrecognizably filthy. That his teeth are fuzzy and that he’s absolutely, ravenously, _starving_.

“Merlin, do I need some chocolate,” he mutters, and can feel no answering derisive growl from within the confines of his mind.

Well, it’s a start, at least.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a rough week, y'all. So, instead of waiting until morning to post this, I'm going to post it now. Any comments or kudos, etc. that you have in you, we'd love to hear from you! One of the best parts of this whole saga has been getting the other person's reactions to new material, so if you want to join in our conversation, we'd love to hear from you! 
> 
> Hope you're all taking care of yourselves, and this story can bring a little happiness, along with all the angst. :-)


	15. Sirius

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We should be back on a more consistent posting schedule for a little bit, now. Thanks so much for reading! Your comments are most welcome. :-)

Sirius – or Padfoot, rather – is on his way to see Dumbledores. Plural. Though he sincerely hopes he sees them consecutively rather than simultaneously. Dumbledores plural is an unsettling experience, a time filled with too little talking, too many beards, and an unnerving number of unblinking blue eyes. It's an encounter Sirius prefers to avoid, though considering his current social scene, he's not exactly in a position to turn anyone away. In fact, his current lack of a social life is ultimately what brought him here today, trotting down High Street on his way to willingly subject himself to The Penetrating Gaze of Doom (term coined by one Monsieur Prongs, in the year of our lord 1976, during the aftermath of a particularly successful April Fools' Day).

*******

One week ago, after nearly a month without a word from either Harry or Remus, Sirius had gotten into a Funk. A Funk in which he examined his own life and decided conclusively that he felt even worse about it than usual. Quite an impressive feat. Only years of dedicated self-loathing could have prepared him to delve into these new depths of masochism; he couldn't have just done it on his own. Sirius had looked around his and Buckbeak's cave and decided that he passionately hated all that he saw. He hated the monstrous mixed-breed beast who noisily crunched rat bones in the corner and didn't seem at all put out by his new living quarters. He hated the pile of letters he kept so pristine. Hated that they mattered so much, hated that the pile never grew, hated all the things the letters made him want. He hated the yellowed and crinkled Daily Prophets littering the floor; hated the lies they told and the people they wrote about. Hated the descriptions of a world from which he was exiled. But above all, he despised the ratty cloth he had found behind Gladrags and hung up as “curtains” in a fit of nostalgia. Sirius sat there, staring, wondering how best to destroy them. He was repulsed by their mockingly upbeat floral pattern. Disgusted that he had bothered with anything remotely resembling home décor, when this was no home, and Sirius had never had what anyone would call _décor_.

James' mom had once said that flowers worked their own unique magic – that no matter their form, flowers lifted the spirit. Well, Sirius was here to prove Mrs. Potter wrong. These flowered curtains made him feel worse. He imagined tearing the curtains off the wall, ripping them up, smaller and smaller. He imagined screaming at the top of his lungs. Kicking over rocks and shredding Daily Prophets. And somewhere in between ripping up a picture of Cornelius Fudge and nearly breaking his toe with one well-aimed kick, Sirius realized that he wasn't imagining anymore. His throat was raw from screaming, and his toe ached, his nails dug painfully into his palms, and his tears – his tears streamed down his face unceasingly.

Sirius sunk to the floor, his scream a howl, clutching his knees as he rocked back and forth. He saw James laughing on his wedding day. Fighting a jellyfish on the beach. Lighting a fire in the woods. Hunched over a map. Lying in the rubble of his own home. He saw Remus hiding his newest scars beneath his hands. Falling asleep with a book on his chest. Carrying baby Harry on his shoulders. He saw Peter plopping into a chair, Lily batting him with scroll of parchment. His tears ran down his cheeks, soaking his robes, pooling on the floor. Thirteen years of unwept tears forced themselves out, until only stillness remained inside him.

When he woke the next day, Sirius' first emotion was anger. Old habits. But his second emotion was something new, something he couldn't quite identify but knew he wanted to hold on to. So he made a Plan. A very un-Sirius-like Plan (the very Plan, in fact, that would lead him to be trotting down High Street on his way to receive singular Dumbledore hospitality. But that is not how the plan started. It started with an Experiment).

Being Sirius was getting Sirius no where. So why not try out being someone else?

The first day, Sirius was James. He stepped out of the cave and looked for someone to save. When no candidates presented themselves, he tried another tactic. After jumping up and down for several minutes, doing what James insisted Muggles call “Jumpy Jacks”, he paused to catch his breath. He might have been imagining it, but he thought his mind did feel just a bit clearer. When he walked back into the cave, he surveyed it through James' eyes – torn up fabrics and Daily Prophets littering the floor, Buckbeak's feathers everywhere, messy blankets making more of a nest than a bed. When there were no damsels to save or adventures to be had, James needed to be doing at least something. So that was how Sirius came to clean the cave and make a wreath out of Buckbeak's feathers, not unlike a craft he had once stumbled upon in Witch Weekly.

On the second day of the Experiment, Sirius was Remus. He spent the morning fretting over the aesthetics of it – how could he get into Moony-mode without tea or a sweater vest? Without old records and a room full of books? By mid-day, he settled for working with what he had. He folded parchment into the rough idea of a journal and picked up his quill. But what would he write? What did Remus write about? Did he still keep a journal? Did he write about his day, or his thoughts, or his plans? Did he write about things that made him happy, or sad, or frustrated, or confused? Did he write about the books he read, or friends who re-appeared after thirteen years? What would Remus be writing about today? After spending most of the afternoon guessing as to the contents of Remus Lupin's journal, Sirius gave it up for a lost cause. He would make a list instead. Remus always made very specific lists, but all Sirius could come up with was, “Things I Am Sure Of”:

  1. I am sick of sitting still

  2. James & Lily (and most of my friends) are dead

  3. Peter is alive (but shouldn't be)

  4. Remus is alive (and should be)

  5. Seven living people know that I am innocent

  6. 3 of these people are teenagers; 1 is a traitor

  7. Remus still hasn't written me back

  8. I will die before going back to Azkaban

  9. I will die before letting anyone harm Harry

  10. Buckbeak is a good friend




Day Three was Lily Day. Lily was not a woman who filled time by making wreaths or writing lists. Lily was a woman who Got Things Done. She made a Plan and then executed said Plan. So it was, that on Lily Day, Sirius had a thought (I want to _talk_ to someone), that he then dissected (Remus? Don't know where he is. Harry? I'm supposed to be looking out for him, not the other way around. Aberforth? Only useful in matters of life and death, or goats. Albus?...) and turned into a Plan (I will contact Dumbledore the elder, requesting that we meet). Now, all Sirius had to do was wait.

*****

Reaching the back entrance to The Hog's Head, Sirius looks both ways before scratching on the door. It opens immediately, and the bartender steps aside to let him in.

“He's upstairs, go on up. I've got work down here.” Aberforth nods to the black dog and walks to a pile of dishes that have either just been used or just been cleaned.

Sirius trots up the stairs, not allowing himself time to wonder at the next phase of his Plan. He won't turn back now. Stopping before the door at the top of the stairs, he breathes in and turns back into his human form. The whirling, anxious, distracted human consciousness comes flooding back into his mind. Nothing about the process could be construed as gentle.

When Sirius enters the room, Albus Dumbledore is sitting in a rocking chair, fingers templed up against his nose, gazing out the window. At the sound of the door opening, he turns his gaze and smiles at Sirius. Sirius can recall and count every smile that has been directed towards him in the last thirteen years.

“Hello, Sirius. How good to see you again.”

Sirius thinks that he might start sobbing at this simple gesture of kindness, so he surprises himself when he feels a smile cross his face instead. An actual genuine smile. He can count those, too.

“Albus, I...it's good to see you again, too. Thank you for coming here today.”

“Please, sit.”

Sirius sits on the edge of an old armchair, facing Dumbledore, and presses his fingers into his thigh.

“How are things at the school?” He asks after a pause.

“The beauty of Hogwarts is that I can never answer that questions with a casual remark; no 'business as usual' or 'as steady as Helga Hufflepuff'. And I don't suppose you risked coming here to hear overused and thoughtless expressions, so I will not do you the dishonor of speaking them. Hogwarts continues to be as ever before: She befuddles and inspires, perplexes and amazes, as do her students.”

Sirius nods. He has never felt fully at ease with Albus Dumbledore, even through their years of fighting alongside one another. He had never had James' natural leadership, or Remus' respectful attention. He had skipped or sat silently in the back of most Order planning meetings, preferring instead to be filled in by his friends. Seeing, however, that Albus is not one to over-divulge information, Sirius racks his brain to find the right words – the words to express his concerns, his gratitude, his daily fixations.

“Harry? And...his friends?” Not the level of articulation he had been aiming for, but effective nonetheless. And concise.

“Harry continues to thrive, as do his friends. He is a great help to Hagrid in tending to his latest...project, and Professor Moody tells me he is easily the most adept Fourth Year in Defense Against the Dark Arts. In keeping with both his mother and his father, as well as yourself, he does not seem to show the same propensity for Divination, but perhaps we can overlook that minor shortcoming.”

“Good kid,” Sirius says gruffly, trying to hold back his grin of pride.

“Indeed, concern for Harry is what caused you to risk your freedom, your comparative comfort, and your very soul to come North, is it not?”

Nodding again, Sirius sets his jaw and wages a silent battle within himself. A strict code of boyhood ethics ingrained in him a distrust of authority figures and a commitment never to reveal another's secrets. Such philosophies have served him well, but his life circumstances have undergone some rather dramatic changes, and perhaps a minor editing of the philosophies is in order.

“Harry's scar hurt this summer.” The words tumble out of Sirius' mouth. He has not realized the weight of carrying them until they are spoken.

Dumbledore, who had been staring across the hills in the distance, snaps his head back to Sirius. His eyes are clear and sharp, and Sirius wonders if he will ever feel like anything other than an unruly schoolboy beneath that keen gaze.

“Indeed.” Although his voice is level, even Dumbledore cannot disguise his alarm. “Did he say anything else?”

“No. Nothing. He tried to play it off as if it were something minor, something he even just imagined, but it clearly had him worried. And rightly so, I imagine. Nobody has ever had residual pain suddenly appear in a 13-year-old scar, have they? This definitely is not normal?”

Sirius is pacing the room now, careful to avoid the line of sight through the window.

“As Harry is the only known person to live with such a scar formed in such a way, one finds it difficult to define the parameters of 'normal'. Even so, I would hazard to say that this does indeed merit closer attention.”

Sighing, Dumbledore re-adjusts his spectacles upon his nose and peers at the agitated man standing before him. “Sirius, I deeply respect and admire the loyalty you have consistently shown those closest to you. However, may I request that, should Harry confide in you any more such occurrences, you share the general idea of his experience with me? I do not wish to infringe on Harry's privacy, but having not lived through darker times, I fear he may not understand the gravity of a given situation.”

Sirius considers the request. He does not want to jeopardize the fragile trust that he has been building with Harry, and yet, he made a promise to James and Lily fourteen years ago, and he has no intention of breaking it now.

“Yes. I will tell you if anything arises that I believe necessary for you to know.”

Dumbledore rests his chin upon his thumb and forefinger, considering him with a look he cannot quite decipher. “Harry is lucky to have you back in his life, Mr. Black.”

For a terrible moment, Sirius thinks Dumbledore might be mocking him, but when he sees that Dumbledore is not, he lets out a laugh. “Lucky? I would hardly say that, Albus. He now has a deranged ex-convict squatting in a nearby cave, ready to come to his aid at a moment’s notice, so long as by 'moment' you mean 'after post arrives' and so long as aid doesn't actually require _going_ anywhere or _being seen_ by anyone. I'm able to offer him about as much home as a troll. Every boy's dream, I'm sure.”

“Not so deranged, I think, Sirius. And you undervalue yourself. You are able to give Harry something he never had before.”

“Hmph. Even without his uncle and aunt, Harry seems to have plenty of role models in his life.”

“Harry is blessed with people who do deeply and genuinely care for him. One must be careful that Molly Weasley does not accidentally smother him to death in her care, and Hagrid has proven to be a true friend. I do believe that Harry found much solace and guidance in his relationship with Professor Lupin throughout last year, and I myself am greatly invested in the boy's well-being and happiness. Even so, you, Sirius, bring something to Harry's life that the rest of us never could, no matter how much we wish otherwise.”

Sirius does not want to believe Dumbledore's words, does not want his face to betray how deeply they are affecting him, how desperately he needs them. He says nothing, but looks at Dumbledore, waiting.

“You give him the truest sense of his family that he could hope to have. As much as Molly may wish he were, Harry is not a Weasley. And while the Weasley's give Harry the warmth and affection his childhood so unfortunately lacked, they do not give him a sense of his own history. Lily and James live in you, Sirius. I believe Harry has been needing that more than any of us realized.”

Sirius' throat constricts and he finds himself unable to speak, which is all for the best, really, because he would not have the words to say. He busies himself by making finger trails through the dust on an old end table when a thought strikes him.

“You mentioned Hagrid and Molly Weasley, Albus. Does anyone...Have you told anyone about me? That I'm innocent? That I'm here?”

“No, Sirius, no one aside from the people you have spoken to directly is aware of your innocence or your whereabouts, and I trust they have kept that to themselves. I know it must be difficult for you, but I believe that for now, it is in everyone's best interest – including yours – to keep hidden all knowledge of you. When the time comes, what is left of the Order will be made aware.”

“When the time comes...?” Sirius lets the question hang in the air, his pulse rising, dread pumping through his veins.

“Surely you've been making the connections yourself already, Sirius. Your news about Harry's scar, although not wholly telling in and of itself, is a part of a greater web. You are aware of the events at the Quidditch World Cup? And no doubt Mr. Lupin filled you in on the latest of Greyback's attacks?”

Sirius nods, but says nothing. He does not want to see what Dumbledore is seeing.

“Indeed, I would not have provided Mr. Lupin with such a task had he not insisted, but the necessity of it becomes clearer with each passing day.”

At this, Sirius spins around so forcefully, the end table topples over, sending quills and parchment across the room.

“Remus, _what_? Where is he? What _task_ did you send him on?”

Dumbledore raises his eyebrows. “I had understood you and Mr. Lupin to be in communication.”

Sirius cannot hide the blush creeping up his neck and flushing his cheeks. “So had I,” he mutters.

“Mr. Lupin expressed a desire to assist me in locating and gathering information regarding Greyback and the upsurge in undisguised werewolf bites. His mission -”

“And you _let_ him?”

“ 'Let him?' Mr. Black? I do not believe it is my place to allow or not allow a grown man to make his own decisions. Besides, it is a task for which I am sure you will agree he is quite uniquely suited.”

“When was the last time you had a report from him? Where is he?”

“Mr. Black, as you may remember from days long gone, it is not my habit to discuss any endeavors with those not directly involved. I will tell you, however, that I last received word from him a fortnight ago. I expect him to return shortly, and I have no cause to feel concern for his safety. As to where he is now, I cannot say. He set his own path.”

“A _fortnight_? And you’re not worried about this?? Where was he when you last heard from him? I can't believe he went on this mission alone! Wasn't that always the number one rule: _No one goes alone?_ I'm going to find him. I am going to make sure he is ok.”

“Really, Sirius? Will you ask the local wizards if they've recently seen a werewolf skulking around? Put an ad out in a local paper? Think reasonably. We have only just discussed your vital importance in Harry's life, and at the slightest hint of adventure, you are ready to abandon him?”

Shame descends on Sirius, muffling his anger. “I was not going to abandon Harry. I was going to help a friend, and then come back.”

“Remus does need your help, Sirius, but not how you imagine. He has, unfortunately, become extraordinarily competent at carrying out solo missions over the last decade. No, he does not need you to come rescue him. But he did let slip how overwhelmingly draining his transformations have become. They were always exhausting of course, but there was a time when others helped out – in various ways, it is now known to me – in making his transformations less...excruciating. The full moon is approaching. He'll be back before it, I'm certain of it. I'll send him to the Shrieking Shack. I imagine your presence will be most welcome.”

 


	16. Remus

He finds himself days later in the shadowy corner of a large and anonymously well-kept pub in Muggle London, the pint he’s ordered for appearance’s sake growing slowly more tepid as it sits, untouched, on the artistically shabby table before him. Next to it, there is the cheap spiral-bound notebook and pen he’d bought from a little shop where the bored, gum-snapping teenager had seemed to look right through him before returning to the intense debate about Oasis she’d been having with her loitering friends.

He’d been heartened by her indifference, just as he’d been encouraged earlier when the handsome barman had sat his pint before him with a cheery “there we are, mate!” and the kind of benignly vacant smile well-known to barmen the world over.

These simple, innocuous brushes with everyday humanity tell Remus that his appearance is not such a cause for alarm as it was on the morning several days ago when he’d stumbled, blinking, into the flat grey Liverpool rain from the factory where he’d lost Greyback’s scent, only to cause hysterics amongst a passing group of school children as he wandered somewhat vacantly into the high street.

The cries of startled horror, the hissed, tearful exclamation of “look at his _face_!” had snapped him out of the exhausted stupor still greying the corners of his vision after his battle with the wolf, a surge of bright adrenaline clearing his head abruptly. He’d fled to a deserted alleyway where he promptly apparated outside the wards of one of Dumbledore’s nearby safe houses, which he’d been told he was welcome to use, but which the wolf had lately been ignoring in favor of the dank, abandoned peripheries favored by his prey.

When he’d finally gotten up the courage to look into the mirror, after thoroughly checking every nook and cranny of the dingy little flat in a force of habit he didn’t have the energy to argue with, he couldn’t begrudge the Liverpool children’s reaction one bit. The ever-present shadows under his eyes had become bruises: dense and purple and throwing the broken red veins in his grey eyes into sharp relief. His hair was greasy and lank, too long and tangled, his skin grey and dirty looking beneath the frayed edges of the clothes he’d been wearing for a month. His shirt, his fingernails, and—horrifyingly—his mouth were stained with the browning red of dried blood from where he’d licked at the injuries he’d incurred during his…  tantrum… of the night previous.

But the most frightening thing Remus saw in the mirror, the thing he was sure had earned him the frightened whisper of “look at his _face_!”, was the look that lingered around his eyes. There was something feral in it; something wild and rough and definitely not human. He’d suspected it, it was true—had avoided puddles and broken glass and shop windows ever since the wolf began to speak—but to see the shadow of the creature on his face filled him with such profound disgust that he’d thrown a musty old blanket over the mirror and studiously avoided looking at it while he showered and slept and ate until he once again felt (marginally) more human.

He couldn’t resume the search for Greyback, that was indisputably true. He couldn’t trust that the same ember of weakness in his character wouldn’t flare back into violent life and consume him entirely, this time. He’d wanted to send his patronus to Dumbledore, telling him as much, but try as he might, he couldn’t dredge up anything resembling a happy enough thought to manifest more than silver wisps of smoke. He finally wrote down a truncated account of the hunt, leaving out how very far down the rabbit hole he’d gotten, but trusting that if anyone could read it between his spare lines about losing the trail, that person was Albus Dumbledore.

He paid to have the letter sent off via delivery owl at Eyelops, but mostly stayed in Muggle London, sequestered as much as possible from other wizards. Though he caught sight of himself accidentally in the windows of a bus one day and was relieved to see his human face at least looked human again, he could not bring himself to spend too much time among people who might recognize the signs of latent lycanthropy. Which meant no Diagon Alley, if he could help it.

He bought himself “new” clothes at a second-hand shop in Soho, the jeans worn almost through at the knees and the jumper smelling strongly of tobacco smoke, and spent as little time as possible in the dull flat that belonged to the Order. He pounded the streets of London; his hands shoved in his pockets as he gazed pensively out at the sea of nameless humanity rushing past him, and tried to imagine himself as reliable, as steady. As placid as the Black Lake.

Which is how he came to be sitting here, in the back of this shiny corporate pub, in the heart of Westminster. It’s relatively dead in here this early afternoon—a few groups of tourists experiencing British culture on their own timetable laughing raucously from near the windows—and Remus has been able to procure a table and a pint and the understanding neglect of the barman, who eyes his blank notebook and untouched pint quizzically as he wipes down the tables around Remus’ refuge.

“Writer’s block, mate?” he asks, eyeing Remus’ tatty jumper and apparently taking him for some sort of down-on-his-luck aspiring author.

Remus smiles at him tiredly, picking up his pint and taking a sip while trying not to grimace at how flat the lager has gone. “Something like that.”

“Keep at it, brother. Who knows when that next flash of inspiration will just hit you out of nowhere?” says the barman, flashing a wink and a very white smile at Remus before walking away with a suggestive flick of his slim, jean-clad hips.

Remus watches him go in shock. Merlin. He’s been spending the last few days just hoping to look _human_ again, not giving a thought in the slightest to looking attractive enough for anyone to flirt with. He is beyond taken-aback by this entirely unexpected turn of events, and tries to school his expression into something other than unadulterated shock as the barman’s eyes flick his way once more.

He looks quickly down at the table to avoid the gaze, only to be met with the conspicuously blank page staring back up at him with something that feels like reproach. The pen lies beside it, where he’s neatly set it down for what feels like the twentieth time in the two hours he’s been here, and he picks it up again guiltily and writes the first two words, as though to prove to himself that he can.

 

_Dear Sirius—_

 

And then he stops. Because the words that Sirius wrote to him in the letter that now sits like a romance novel cliché beneath his jumper and beside his heart, are too precious to try to out-do. He runs over them in his mind again, the edges of the sentences gone smooth and soft like the edges of the paper that he unfolds and refolds five or six times a day. The letter he got from Sirius in Liverpool feels like a talisman against the inhuman part of himself that still scratches hopefully against the walls he’s managed to erect against it, and trying to draft anything resembling a response to this magic spell is leaving Remus hopelessly intimidated and more than a little desperate.

Because he knows Sirius. Knows that his own too-long silence will be weighing on his friend more than he’ll ever admit, and that Sirius left to his own thoughts for too long is likely to begin questioning everything, even perfectly obvious things that should be as apparent to Sirius as his own need for oxygen. And if that was true of the cocky, confident-appearing boy that he’d loved in another lifetime, he can only imagine how those same tendencies will be amplified in the fragile, broken man he’s been writing to and relearning for months.

This new Sirius has written Remus his heart, and Remus is terrified by what that means. 

Sirius’ letter says that he feels like he is losing himself. Like every atom in his body is fighting against him, trying to fly off and make a go of it somewhere else. He says there are times when he can’t remember if he’s a dog or a man, that he’s no good to anyone in the shattered state his life has left him in. And he’s looking to Remus for answers. For guidance. To help him restore his sanity and help him get a grip on his… him. Again. Before he loses himself and is subsumed in something too big for him to control.

Poor Sirius. How is he to know that Remus is as bad off as he is?

He slams the pen down again with a frustrated, growling sigh, and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes until purple spots burst behind his eyelids. Then he runs his hands distractedly through his still-too-long hair and makes the mistake of looking up and toward to bar again. The handsome barman catches his eye and grins, something in his very white smile reminding Remus irresistibly of Adem. It is pretty clear, even to Remus, who is notoriously clueless about such things, that the barman is interested in him. If he stays where he is and nurses his pint to death, the barman will bring him another and tell him it’s on the house. His number will be on the cocktail napkin, and when his shift is over he’ll drop by Remus’ table to see if he wants to take a walk—maybe get the creative juices flowing again? And the walk will inevitably lead them past the barman’s flat, where he’ll ask Remus if he fancies a cup of tea, and things will progress from there.

The thought of how it could all play out makes Remus slightly queasy. Not because the barman isn’t attractive; in fact, there was a time during those torturous and miserable twelve years of self-imposed exile when Remus would have absolutely taken him up on his offer and then slipped quietly away from tangled sheets and warm limbs in the middle of the night, the rest of which would be spent getting as far away from whatever city as it was possible to get, the cold lump of self-loathing sitting heavy and familiar in his stomach.

Now, though, the stare only makes him keenly aware of how much he does not want what the barman is offering. How much he does not want anything except for to see Sirius again—to see that sunken face that has taunted him from wanted posters for going on two years now, that Remus still finds so compelling despite the ravages of time and prison. His want burns like a constant low-level flame behind his ribs, flaring up at random moments when some tiny little thing—a snatch of delighted laughter, a shy smile exchanged between strangers on a bus, a certain deep red color that he can’t help but imagine against naked, moon-pale skin—will bring Sirius front and center in his mind, smiling softly at Remus from his imagination or his memories.

He has all of Sirius’ letters. He keeps them safely pressed between the pages of _The Count of Monte Cristo_ in the trunk he left with Dumbledore, and has read each one in the last lonely months since June enough times that he has the most important bits memorized. The parts where Sirius has been honest with him—where he’s stopped pretending that everything is fine and admitted that he’s been grievously wronged—that they’ve been grievously wronged—by a life that wasn’t supposed to be this way.

And yet there is still the wry humor, the cutting intelligence and aching vulnerability that Remus knows are as fundamental to Sirius’ very being as the freckle on the back of his right knee or his almost supernaturally good hair or the soft, secret smile that only Remus has ever seen. Beneath and around and within all of the pain and anger and confusion, Sirius is still very much the same person as that eleven-year-old boy who grinned at him from a train carriage twenty years ago.

And it has taken Remus no time at all to fall in love with him all over again, if he had ever fallen out of love at all. 

But the page is still infuriatingly blank, despite all the whirling, honest thoughts battering against the insides of Remus’ mind. He’ll never be able to express them with just a silly, cheap pen on some tearable, fallible paper. He’s had enough of thinking these things, of trying to write them down in sentences that make any kind of sense, that convey any semblance of the feelings behind them. He can’t do it. Not like this.

He slams back the rest of the (by this point quite disgusting) lager, grabs his stupid notebook and his stupid pen, and leaves a few quid on the table before striding quickly towards the exit without looking toward the bar again. He needs to be alone now, can’t be worrying about sparing the feelings of someone else when he can’t even get a grip on his own well enough to explain them. The lager has left a sort of dull sourness in his mouth, and it makes him wince as he finds a quiet, shadowy alleyway and apparates back to the safe house, throwing the notebook down in frustration as he appears in the tiny kitchen.

He gulps three glasses of tepid tap water down in quick succession before he notices the large, glossy grey owl staring expectantly at him from atop a floor lamp. Remus starts slightly but then rushes across the short distance between them so abruptly that the owl ruffles its feathers and snaps a lethally sharp-looking beak in warning.

Remus steps back, his hands held up in a gesture of apology. “Sorry,” he mutters. “You just surprised me, that’s all. Could I have my letter, though?”

The owl blinks at him, and Remus swears he can feel irritation radiating off of the bird. But it nevertheless sticks out the leg bearing the scroll of fine, thick parchment, and Remus swallows back the disappointment at the sight of anything other than the rough, cheap paper that has characterized all of Sirius’ letters.

He takes the scroll from the bird, which doesn’t immediately fly off, as though it has been instructed to wait for a reply. So, not wanting to annoy it any further than he clearly already has, he breaks the royal blue wax seal inscribed with a rising phoenix and unrolls the parchment filled with Dumbledore’s looping, graceful script.

 

_Tuesday_

_18 October, 1994_

_My dear Professor Lupin—_

_Please accept my sincere gratitude for your latest report. The news of Fenrir Greyback’s disappearance seems to be only one of many recent indicators that tell me that we will soon need to reevaluate our strategy insofar as it pertains to the matters we discussed during our last in-person audience. If I might request the honor of meeting with you again at Hogwarts, your strategic input and expertise would be greatly appreciated in outlining the next stage of our defensive tactics._

_I regret that I will not be able to meet with you until at least Friday of this week given previous engagements, but hope that you might be amenable to traveling to Hogsmeade as soon as possible, should some earlier opportunity to confer materialize. There is accommodation, with which you are familiar, that should suit your needs very well and that will afford us the occasion to meet with the discretion that I’m sure you will agree is necessary, given the clandestine nature of our work. I can promise that the amenities of said accommodation have been repaired since your last visit, and you may find the company to be had in the neighborhood to be suitably diverting._

_Please do let me know if you will be able to accept my invitation. The owl has been instructed to wait for your reply, and to convey any other communication to parties you think may benefit from knowledge of your presence at Hogwarts. I look forward to seeing you at the soonest convenience your schedule may allow._

_Cordially yours,_

_Albus Dumbledore_

 

Remus reads the letter twice, struck by the mannered style of Dumbledore’s writing that would not be out of place in an Austen novel. Part of him is mildly annoyed at this seemingly effortless ability that Albus has to say everything that needs to be said in such a vague and inoffensive way that is nevertheless perfectly clear in both meaning and intent.

Though the letter states very little in the way of specifics, it is clear that Dumbledore wants Remus to come to Hogsmeade tonight, spend the full moon tomorrow in the Shrieking Shack, and enter the grounds of Hogwarts, unobserved, through the Willow tunnel to meet with him about the reformation of the Order of the Phoenix in light of heightened Death Eater activity in the last few months. Remus shakes his head in wonder. To say all of that without saying any of it… no wonder it’s Dumbledore who is the leader of their efforts at underground resistance.

He retrieves the notebook from where he’s thrown it into a corner, rips off half a sheet of paper, and scrawls quickly, with no mind to neatness or the kind of cordiality of Dumbledore’s neat, official missive.

 

_I’ll be there tomorrow._

_\--RJL_

 

He uses a temporary sticking charm to attach the folded scrap of paper to the owl’s outstretched leg, and it quirks its head inquisitively at him, not moving, seemingly waiting for instructions. Or for Remus to man up and write the letter he knows Dumbledore intended him to—quit being a coward and just put pen to paper already.

Why is this damn bird judging him?

Or, perhaps more realistically, why is he projecting his own feelings on a bloody owl?

“Fine,” he sighs, flipping the notebook pages impatiently. “Wait ten minutes, and I’ll have the other one.”

He sinks into one of the mismatched chairs at the battered kitchen table, the two words he’d written earlier staring up at him from the slightly abused-looking notebook page. 

He takes a deep, calming breath, picks up the pen, and begins to write without letting himself overthink it. Writes in a steady stream of fragmentary thoughts that are all true, but may make no sense to someone who is not him. He’ll just have to trust that Sirius knows him well enough to take their meaning; even lacking the coherence and word-craft with which he usually takes such care.

****  
  


_18 October, 1994_

_Dear Sirius—_

_I’m coming North, too. I need to talk to Dumbledore, but, timing being what it is, I’ll be taking a short vacation first in our old beach house. I want to take the opportunity to do some stargazing, but I don’t know where you are or if… but if you can, I…_

_Look, I just want to see you, alright? I’ve had enough writing back and forth and reading between the lines and taking months to say what we really mean when we could just have it out face to face instead. Your last letter… I don’t know, Sirius. There are things that I… and apparently I can’t just write them down anymore, and I just want you with me. Here. Or there. Anywhere. Everywhere. I don’t know._

_If you haven’t died from the shock of Remus not wanting to write things down, I’m coming tomorrow—going to try to be inside and secure well before moonrise. Just. Please. Come, if you can. If you want to. I’ve done this by myself so many times I’ve lost track, but now that I know you’re out there somewhere it’s like I hate the change all the more because you’re not there with me. Which makes me an unbelievably selfish arsehole, but there it is. I need you with me. That’s all._

_Just. Please, Sirius._

_\--Remus_

 

When he’s scrawled his signature at the bottom of the page, he tears it from the notebook and quickly folds it without giving himself the chance to read it again and second-guess what he’s written. The owl sticks out its other foot, as though sensing the urgency in Remus’ hurried movements, and allows him to attach the packet to it without complaint.

Stepping back from the owl, Remus makes eye contact with it as it tilts its head quizzically—obviously waiting for his instructions.

“I’m betting Albus told you where I’d probably send you,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair again. “And if that’s not both embarrassing and irritating… but. Take that one to Sirius Black, yeah? You can find him?”

The bird looks at him with mild affront, seeming to have taken offense at his questioning of its ability to do its job. With ruffled feathers and one more click of its beak, it spreads great grey wings and takes off through the open window, leaving Remus with his hand still clutched in his hair and his heart beating somewhere around his throat. When it is no longer visible amongst the dirty, rain-soaked buildings of outer London, he turns from the window and strides purposefully from the flat and down into the street.

Because if he’s actually going to do this, he’s going to need a haircut, at least.

And probably some chocolate.

No, definitely some chocolate.

 


	17. Sirius

The sunset truly is magnificent, Sirius thinks. All pinks and purples, with the flat dense clouds he associates with the on-coming cold. He’s surprised by how quickly nature’s cues are returning to him. The damp, suffocating smell that means it’s about to rain. The pervasive stillness of snow cover that muffles the world’s cacophony. The sight of St. George’s mushrooms signaling that spring has finally stopped toying with them and has whole-heartedly arrived. Remus taught him that one. In their Fourth Year. Long before he could have ever imagined that such knowledge would one day be crucial to his survival.

********

_James was off playing a pick-up Quidditch game with Kingsley, Frank, and some Hufflepuff Fifth Years. Peter stood cheering in the stands, waving the scarlet Gryffindor banner back and forth furiously. Sirius had been planning on joining them, but when he arrived at the Quidditch pitch, broomstick in hand, he paused. The sight of Peter jumping up and down and James twirling about only made his already atrocious mood even more foul. A letter had arrived that morning. Brought by a lone raven in a swarm of owls. Post from his dear mother. The letter it bore was no worse than her usual admonishments, and it surprised Sirius that her words still held the power to ruin a day. Even Quidditch couldn’t fix it, though playing Chicken with James did, at least, distract him for a while. Sirius shook his head, watching Peter._

_“Just look at him,” he said to Remus, who had been leaning against a nearby tree, observing his friends with a faint look of both bemusement and confusion. “You’d think he’s at the bloody World Cup.” When no one answered, Sirius looked round behind him. Remus had left his post by the tree and was now crouching on the ground, peering at some small growth among the grass. As Sirius watched him, Remus stood and began walking towards the forest. Sirius sighed. Moony. Always wandering away from all the excitement. With a backwards glance at James, who was now zooming in tight figure-eights around two shrieking girls, Sirius followed him._

_When Sirius caught up with Remus, he was leaning over the branch of a dead tree - Beech, one of the few Sirius could identify - staring intently at something._

_“You won’t find a date in dead trees, Moony,” Sirius jeered._

_Remus, unphased, did not look up. “I might if I wanted to date a Brownie, or a Bowtruckle,” he replied._

_“Ugh, I’d sooner date Kreacher. But, if that’s what suits you, you better be careful you don’t squash it with that nose of yours then. Can you even see over it?”_

_At this, Remus straightened up and looked at Sirius, taking in his stormy face, his squared shoulders, the broomstick clutched in his right hand. “Well aren't you just delightful today. Why aren’t you over fluttering about with James?”_

_Sirius shrugged and moved forward, peering at the branch. “What were you looking at, anyway?”_

_“Winter Polypore,” Remus said, pointing to a cluster of small whitish mushrooms nestled among the moss on the branch._

_“Mmm, delicious edible?”_

_Remus snorted. “Be my guest,” sweeping his arm towards the mushrooms. Sirius reconsidered._

_“Deadly poison for Snivellus? Psychotic birthday gift for James? A little something for Sprouty’s greenhouse to make her love you even more?”_

_Remus almost laughed. Almost. Instead, he attempted a severe look, a la Professor McGonagall, that he had been practicing in the mirror. It didn’t seem to have the same effect on his face._

_“Alright, alright,” said Sirius, tossing his broom into the grass. “Tell me what this amazing Winter Polly-Bore does.”_

_“Polypore. Well...nothing really. I was just looking at it. I guess it’s interesting that they’re around from fall to spring, which is a pretty long time if you think about it. But you can’t eat them, or make medicine, or anything. So basically, they’re around all the time, but they don’t really do anything.”_

_“Like Peter,” Sirius said, nodding sagely._

_Ignoring him, Remus continued. “The cap starts out thin and smooth, but it gets tougher as it ages.”_

_“Ah, not like Peter then.”_

_Remus let out an impatient sigh. “You really are exceptional company today. How lucky I am to be graced with your presence.” And without looking at Sirius, Remus strode deeper into the forest._

_After a few stunned moments, Sirius trotted after him. “Moony. Hey! Moony! You do know this is the_ Forbidden _Forest, right?” He caught up with Remus, falling into step  beside him._

_“Ha.Ha. I’m well aware. I’m just going to that clearing up ahead. And no one needs to know about it. Unless, of course, you plan on snitching?”_

_Sirius halted in his tracks, a feeling of genuine horror taking root in his stomach. “_ I _, a snitch? Moony, how could you insinuate...imply...intimate…?”_

_“I taught you that word and you use it against me.”_

_“Yes, well, you took pity on a man, who, for no credible reason, was not succeeding with the scrumptious Daisy Hookum.”_

_“For many credible reasons. She was too smart for you anyway, as evidenced by her leaving when you asked if she wanted to get ‘inti-mate’.”_

_“A mistake that shall never happen again, thanks to your illuminating explanation of homographs. I am forever in your debt.”_

_“Harhar.” But Remus looked slightly mollified just the same._

_They had reached the edge of the clearing, and Remus stopped, surveying it. He looked at Sirius, standing by his side, and then back out at the field. “This is what I came here for,” he said softly, gesturing out towards the grass._

_The clearing was a marvelous, vibrant green. The spring rains had brought the whole forest to life, and this field was practically humming with the vitality of it all. Moss covered the rocks, the stumps, the decaying logs. Bright purple flowers peppered the grass. The inconstant sun peered out from behind the dense clouds, lighting the newly unfurled leaves and illuminating the motes drifting through the air._

_Sirius peered out across the clearing. At first, all he could see was green grass dotted with violets. But as he continued looking, small specks of white became visible throughout the field. The more he looked, the more he saw. “I take it these are better than the Peter mushrooms?”_

_“St. George’s Mushroom. Calocybe gambosa.”_

_“And what magical tome taught you all of this, Moony?”_

_“No tome. No book. I learn from things other than books. Not all mothers are awful, you know.”_

_Sirius jerked his head around to face forward once again, back ramrod straight, muscles tensed, a sudden statue. He showed no sign of having heard Remus’ words, and his eyes stared blankly ahead. Remus, seeing he had scorned Sirius' deepest scars, moved so he was standing directly in front of Sirius._

_“Sirius. Hey. I’m sorry. That was cruel. That’s what I get for trying to be cavalier. I mess it all up. I should just stick to facts. I should have said this: My mum taught me. She’s always loved mycology, remember? I’m sorry. Here, let me show you something. It’s worth it, I promise.”_

_Sirius allowed Remus to take him by the arm and steer him to the center of the field. Once in the middle, Remus spun Sirius in a slow circle. At first, he felt ridiculous. He had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing. But as he turned, he realized that, unlike he had first imagined, the mushrooms were not scattered across the field. They formed the rough shape of a circle, at the center of which stood Sirius and Remus. Forgetting his anger, Sirius turned to face his friend. “A fairy ring? You knew this would be here?”_

_“This type almost always comes back to the same place every year. I’ve been coming here since First Year.”_

_“Since First Year?! You’ve been sneaking into the Forbidden Forest by yourself since First Year?! For mushrooms???”_

_Remus shrugged, looking down. “I was homesick,” he said, as if Sirius could possibly grasp such a notion. “I missed my mum. St. George’s Mushrooms reminded me of her - we always used to pick them together.”_

_Sirius plopped down on the plush moss, sighing in comfort, his anger gone as quickly as it had come. “OK, Moony. I’ll indulge you. Tell me about these mushrooms. None of the boring stuff though.”_

_“You think everything I like is boring.”_

_“Lies! You like treacle tart. And I like treacle tart, too. That’s a thing.”_

_“Yes, but if I talked to you about baking treacle tart, you’d steal all my jumpers and give them to Peeves and I’d have to jump through all sorts of hoops to get them back and he’d sing that terrible Loony Loopy Lupin song while dressing all of the suits of armor in my favorite wool jumpers and then they'd be all stretched out and I'd never be able to wear them again,” Remus let out in one long breath._

_“Precisely. And that would be not at all boring. So we are agreed. Now, please, I am waiting for my in-depth study on the fascinating St. George’s Mushroom to begin.” Sirius waved his hand imperiously at Remus, who, sensing defeat, plucked a mushroom and sat gingerly on the edge of a moss covered rock._

_“This is the St. George’s mushroom. You can distinguish it by its smooth spherical white cap and its white and crowded gills, see here,” he turned the mushroom over and ran his finger lightly over the gills on the cap’s underside. He then brought it to his nose and breathed in deeply. “It also smells a bit like wet flour.”_

_“Mooooony,” Sirius groaned, covering his eyes. “You are making me yearn for Binns right now.”_

_“Sirius, pay attention. This is actually important. If you don’t know about the gills and the smell, you can mistake it for the Deadly Fibrecap.”_

_Sirius perked up. “Deadly? Really?”_

_“Yes. Very much so. And while many people would not mourn your departure from our bountiful earth, I, contrary to all reason, would. So. Repeat after me: St. George’s Mushroom - white gills, smells like flour. Deadly Fibrecap - pink gills, does not smell like flour.”_

_“St. George - white and flour-y. Deadly Cap - pink and not flour-y.”_

_Remus sighed. “Merlin help you if you ever actually have to rely on this for sustenance.”_

_“They’re edible?? Why didn’t you say so?” Sirius leapt to his feet and began picking the closest mushrooms._

_“Sirius. Wait. Wait! Only take a few. Besides, they’re not very delicious raw, anyway. Merlin’s Beard, Sirius! At least only take the young ones, they’re more tender.”_

_Surveying the small mound that Sirius had collected, Remus took off his school bag and began to pack them up carefully._

_“What are you doing?” Sirius yelped. “I thought we were going to eat them!”_

_“Well, they’re not very good raw.”_

_“So we’ll make a fire. Roast them. Like wild adventurers, scrounging for food.”_

_“We’re not supposed to do magic on the grounds.”_

_“Yeah, well, need I remind you we’re not supposed to be in the_ Forbidden _Forest either. I’d say the fire is the lesser transgression.”_

_And so the afternoon passed, with Sirius producing a mound of butter from his robes (“Nicked it from the kitchen”) and slathering it copiously upon each mushroom, and Remus finding the most secure way of using two sticks to hold said buttered mushroom over the fire. Some mushrooms were sacrificed to flames, others roasted to perfection. By the time they had worked their way through the lot, the sky was beginning to darken, but neither had any appetite left for dinner._

_Making their way out of the forest, Remus watched as Sirius bent to pick some remaining mushrooms. “What awfulness did your mother’s letter say this time?” He blurted out, then quickly covered his mouth, alarmed by the bluntness of his own unplanned words._

_Sirius straightened up, startled. “I almost forgot. You know, Moony, it was just what she always says, I don’t even really remember. Hey, look, another mushroom! What’s this one?”_

********

The sky has darkened considerably when the sound of distant church bells pulls Sirius from his reverie. He studies the sky. The full moon has not yet risen, but its impending arrival hums in Sirius’ bones. Not since he was twelve years old and learned of Remus’ “furry little problem” has a full moon risen without him thinking of Remus. Tonight is no different.

Except that it is. Never before has Sirius had the _ability_ to be with Remus on the full moon and yet wondered at whether or not to go be with him. During the war, Sirius had offered to take the worst shifts, do the most abhorrent tasks (the number of times he disposed of the camp lavatory), all so that others would be willing to cover for him 3 days out of every month. Some vacation that was. Staying up all night with your lover, trying to ensure he became neither killer nor killed. He often came back more exhausted than when he left. But he never questioned it. Not once. Until tonight.

Tonight. For the first night in thirteen years, Sirius could be with Remus on the full moon. He could help his friend in the one way he used to know how.

But does Remus even want his help? Dumbledore thought so. But Dumbledore also thought that Remus had talked to Sirius about his mission, which clearly he had not. Surely, Remus would benefit from the presence of another living person, albeit in animal form. A presence to remind his werewolf self -- however distantly felt -- of what it means to be human. And that was what had made Sirius excel at this job, although he had not realized it then. He was so very alive, and so very very human. Even as Padoot, his existence reminded the werewolf that there was more to his life than the ghoulish body that claimed control once a month. In short, Sirius’ companionship made Remus less vicious.

But that was before Azkaban. The electricity that once coursed through Sirius’ veins has disappeared, only to surge back in short bursts, usually accompanied by fists and tears. His presence could not possibly remind werewolf Remus of what it means to be human. And Sirius can’t imagine himself capable of providing comfort to Remus during the day either; not Remus, who seemed always to comfort Sirius without ever trying. Remus, who could make Sirius forget the letter in which his mother first threatened to disown him by merely teaching him about mushrooms! Surely, he would be better off in his own calming presence than subjected to Sirius’ chaotic one.

Lost once more in the musings of his own self-hatred, Sirius barely registers the owl soaring towards him until she lands at his feet. The owl’s feathers are sticking out in every which way, and she appears to be dripping with rain. In her beak is a soggy, though fully intact, letter. The owl flies off once more the moment Sirius has retrieved the letter, clearly terrified by the prospect of making another delivery. With shaking hands, Sirius opens the letter, unfolding the damp parchment slowly, so as not to damage the messily scrawled words.  

He reads the letter once. He reads it a second time.

Transforming to Padfoot, he is gone before the letter falls to the ground.

 


	18. Remus

The Shrieking Shack has undergone something of a renovation since the last time Remus was here.

As he pokes his head cautiously from the outlet of the Willow tunnel, the chameleon shifting of his skin an itching distraction at the corner of his Disillusioned eye, the sight that greets him gives him pause for a moment before he feels a wry smile curve his lips. _Thanks for the vote of confidence, old man._

The great room of the old house has been cleaned and re-furnished. The dark wood of the mantle gleams free of its decades-old coating of dust, the scratches that the wolf has gouged in the walls made less obvious with a fresh coat of paint. The floors are still scarred and uneven, but have been polished so that the soft afternoon light filtering in through newly-hung curtains bounces off them, forming watery pools of cloudy sunshine on the faded old furniture that had not been here-- or at least not whole-- the last time.

Remus steps out into the room, his nose twitching with the lemony scent of furniture polish and the ozone tang of magic. He lets his eyes scan the room, taking in the glassed-in bookshelves that have been recently stocked, the wizard chess set sat ready to play before the fireplace stacked high with logs and kindling. He detects the scents of fresh bread and apples and tea wafting faintly from the kitchen, and investigates only to find that it, too, has recently fallen victim to a similar sprucing.

Making his way up the servants' stairs that lead from the kitchen to the second floor, Remus finds that, though the whole of the house has been dusted and cleaned, Dumbledore must have instructed the house elves to focus only on certain rooms for the full brunt of his strange hospitality. The master bedroom has been one such, with the four-poster bed dusted and a new mattress installed, but the three other bedrooms have only undergone the most cursory of cleanings. The floors are spotless and the dust all gone, but no new furniture has been added. In fact, but for the chains hung in the small windowless room at the back of the house, heavy with the magical reinforcements buzzing all around them, the other rooms on the second floor are barren.

He returns to the largest bedroom and deposits his battered old rucksack in the large wardrobe that has pride of place against the longest wall. It's been scrupulously cleaned both inside and out, but his sensitive nose can nevertheless pick out the faint scent of blood from where Snape's head had smashed against its edge during that confusing, harrowing night that still stands out in Remus' memory as sharply as if it had happened only moments ago.

Ron Weasley sprawled out across the heavy bed, his leg bent at an angle that had been painful even to look at, his wide blue eyes full of fear and pain and confusion, but also that hard, determined loyalty as he had struggled to get himself upright, ready to ignore all of it if he could protect his friends.

Hermione Granger, her wild hair in tangles and a gash across her cheek from the Willow's stinging branches, her voice unsteady but strong as she'd laid out everything she'd worked out-- jumping to the only conclusion that made any sense with the incisive acuity of mind he'd admired in her from the first moment her hand had shot up in his classroom.

And Harry. Harry, with his green eyes snapping with shock and betrayal as he'd shouted at Remus, accusing him of being in league with the man who had murdered his parents. Harry, whose voice still cracked with the remnants of a childhood Remus had all but missed, his face so different than it had been even in September, taking on the shapes and angles of an adulthood that would make his resemblance to his father that much more striking. Harry, who in that moment had thought Remus both capable of and intending to kill him, eyes furious and cold as he watched Remus and Sirius cling to each other.

That look of betrayal on Harry's face has haunted Remus in the intervening months. The implication in his head that, if he'd just done right by the boy, Harry would never have had any reason to doubt Remus in the first place. If he'd done as he should have, Harry would have known him from childhood, would have trusted him, would have heard the whole story in a context other than that of thinking his life was in imminent danger of ending.

That look is branded on his memory with almost the same harsh clarity as the look in Sirius' eyes when they’d first met his. The fear and hope and trepidation that he'd seen there, the wild, mad, murderous gleam as he'd pointed his wasted hand to where Peter cowered, weak and despicable and afraid, in the unwary protection of a thirteen-year-old boy. The dank, animal smell of Sirius in his arms, the horrible-wonderful feel of his desperately altered body where he pressed into Remus, the sound of his own pulse thundering in Remus' ears.

It had been the first touch in thirteen years to get any reaction at all from Remus' heart.

He shakes himself from his reverie long enough to realize that October in Scotland is seeping in through the drafty old house. He raises his wand and lights the bedroom’s fireplace, stacked and ready as it is, and goes to stand before it, gazing pensively into the steadily growing flames.

_I just want you here. There. Anywhere. Everywhere._

Merlin, had he actually written that?

The impatient owl and his own frustration had rushed him into it: that first, unstudied confession of their renewed and fragile correspondence. He'd dashed it off and sent it without the usual hours of agonizing, of reading and rereading and anticipating every possible reaction from Sirius, and as he runs over the words for the thousandth time since he wrote them, he feels panic begin to claw irrepressibly at his chest. He wants Sirius here with him so much it's like a constant stinging pain just behind his ribs, but he's all but demanded that Sirius relinquish that little bit of hard-won freedom he's gained since escaping Azkaban to be at Remus' beck and call.

His fingers clench around the gleaming clean wood of the mantlepiece, feeling the tiniest bit of give as the wood responds to the burgeoning strength that belies his oncoming transformation. He really should just chain himself up now-- cast the Silencing and Repelling and Undetectable charms that will keep inquisitive locals from stumbling upon their unwitting deaths-- but can’t bring himself to put an end to the slim hope that Sirius might yet come to him.

He’ll wait just a little longer.

He barely bites back a snarl of disgust with himself, but feels the wood splinter even more with the effort it takes him to keep silent.

He is selfish. He is weak. He is _everything_ that Sirius is not.

He runs frustrated hands through hair that is shorter and cleaner than it has been in months, pulling at the skin of his face as though to press some of the premature lines back into the appearance of youth, tries to gather his fragmented thoughts to no avail. As the Disillusionment charm wears thin and his skin begins to take on its own natural hues again, snatches of memory flit through his mind-- a kiss on a train platform, Sirius' deep musing voice thick with the lassitude of gillyweed, a hidden corner of the Hogwarts library, a frigid balcony in the dark of a December night-- and his stomach sinks even further, twisting itself into intricate knots of nerve and regret.

Because he also remembers Sirius' expression when he'd been looking at Harry that night back in June. The avid, focused determination, the intent, protective expression that he's seen so many times before on the younger, less tortured version of that beloved face. It was the way Sirius had looked at Harry when he was a baby: proud and fierce and fascinated, taking in every detail of the person with whose care he had been entrusted, for whom he would risk anything in the world.

********

_He is sitting beside Sirius on the sofa in James and Lily's tiny sitting room, nestled up against his side in the blue moonlight of a late August evening. The fire is not lit, but a small candle-- Lily’s idea-- flickers on a table in the corner, above which hang the obituaries and photographs of their friends and allies who have died in the fight against Voldemort. They are papered thick and high against the cheery spring green, each face a grim source of motivation for their continuing fight._

_But there’ve been no deaths this week, no massive acts of terrorism claimed by none but whispering shadows, and the four of them-- James and Lily, Sirius and Remus-- have been reveling in the tiny, snatched moment of calm to hold something of a housewarming for the little cottage in Godric’s Hollow._

_James and Lily are snoring quietly, collapsed against each other on the floor with their backs to the sofa, like soldiers getting some shut-eye during the lull between skirmishes. The source of their exhaustion is snuggled in Sirius' arms, wrapped in the thick woolen receiving blanket that had been pressed into a shocked and still very-pregnant Lily's hands by Minerva McGonagall at an Order meeting the month before. The full head of dark black hair he'd been born with peeps teasingly from the soft folds of the blanket, his bell-like mouth slack and his eyes closed in momentary respite from his favorite pastime of screaming like a banshee._

_Sirius holds Harry gingerly, as though the baby is made of sugar and he's been charged with carrying him through a rainstorm. Remus watches his face as Sirius watches Harry's, eyes eagerly following every twitch of the child's mouth, every flicker of his eyelids, every tiny flexing of his minute but perfect fingers._

_"How is anything alive so_ tiny _?" breathes Sirius almost inaudibly, as though any sound might break the spell of this stolen moment of peace._

 _"What are you talking about?" laughs Remus softly, his eyes not leaving Sirius' fascinated, moonlit face. "I recall a certain second-year who had a pygmy marmoset sleeping in his sock drawer for a month._ Much _smaller than Harry, that."_

 _"You know what I mean," admonishes Sirius, his mouth unconsciously widening to mimic the baby as Harry yawns in his sleep. "Alive. Like, he's a_ person _. This whole new person that didn't exist three weeks ago, and now he's here and he's real and he's got lungs like a damn foghorn..."_

_"Annoyingly loud must be genetic," chuckles Remus, casting a fond, amused eye over at James as he gives a familiar, sonorous snort and nuzzles further into his wife's shoulder. "Imagine what he'll be like when he gets to walking and talking."_

_"I shudder to think," replies Sirius, who does nothing of the kind. He's still entirely wrapped up in the child in his arms, watching Harry sleep with a fascination that Remus has only ever seen reserved for the newest issues of_ Quidditch Illustrated _, along with a variant on the soft, wondrous look that Sirius usually seems to reserve just for him. The expression makes his stomach do pleasant little flips, but there's a bittersweet edge to the feeling that's getting harder to ignore, the more he sees Sirius with his best friends' newborn child._

 _"Do you ever wish we could... that is... do you ever want..." Remus trails off as his fingers trace gently over Harry's smooth forehead, brushing the hair away from the clean and delicate skin. He finds it impossible to finish the question, the niggling doubt in the back of his mind resurfacing, in spite of the fact that he and Sirius seem to finally understand each other a little better since Christmas. But seeing Sirius like this makes him keenly aware of all the things the other man is missing by being with him, and the old fear of_ not enough _whispers maliciously from his subconscious, even as he tries valiantly to ignore it._

_Sirius finally tears his gaze away from the child's sleeping face at that, his eyes clearing as he levels a tiny, confused frown at Remus, who is finding it suddenly difficult to meet his eyes._

_"What?" Sirius asks, lowering his head to catch Remus' eyes where they are examining Harry's left thumbnail. "Raise a child? Have babies? I'm all for practicing in theory, Moony, but it might not be the moment, just now." He gives a softer version of his bark-like laugh, waggling his eyebrows suggestively at Remus._

_"It's not an altogether stupid question, you know," grumbles Remus, feeling his face flush and silently blessing the darkness of the sitting room. "Ever since Harry arrived, you've barely been able to focus on anything else. You_ love _him. It only makes sense that it might make you think..."_

 _"What? That I'm suddenly going to give up my dashing life of daring-do to change nappies and be voluntarily thrown-up upon?" Sirius’ eyes are warm in the moonlight as he adjusts his hold on the little bundle in his arms and leans in to rest his forehead against Remus' temple. "Remus, I can_ already _do those things for_ this _child. I don't_ need _to faff off and have a whole litter of my own."_

 _"And that'll be enough?" asks Remus, doubtfully, staring in fascination at the soft, thick fan of sooty eyelashes resting against the baby's cheek. He really is amazing. And he looks_ just _like James. Except for his eyes. He has his mother's eyes._

 _"Moony, I love you more than breathing, but you really are_ very _stupid sometimes," muses Sirius, pecking Remus on the cheek. "You and I_ are _going to help raise this child. We'll get to take him to Quidditch matches and you can read him bedtime stories and I'll teach him the pranks that James doesn't know about that I've been keeping in reserve for just this occasion, and when he gets cranky or wets himself or turns the neighbor's cat blue, we can let James and Lily have him and we can go back to ours where you will throw me up against a wall and snog the life out of me without having to worry about traumatizing any impressionable young minds."_

_"Thank goodness you've given this such thorough contemplation."_

_"I actually_ have _, you know," sighs Sirius, adjusting the blanket so that it is tucked more securely around Harry’s tiny shoulders. “It’s not as if you and I just met in a pub last week and had a quickie in the loos, Remus. It’s not as though you’ve corrupted me with your vile man-kisses and have spoiled all my long-and-dearly-held plans to carry on the Noble and Most Ancient Name of Black. Be Father of the Century or some such. You_ are _the plan, Moony,” he smiles softly at Remus, whose heart is suddenly performing a tango with his stomach. “_ This _is the plan.”_

_He nods around at the cozy sitting room so recently decorated in Lily’s cheery style, at James’ broomstick hung carefully with his gear in the cupboard, at the pair of them passed out with their heads bent together and their fingers entwined. Remus follows his eyes to the window, where Sirius’ motorbike is just visible inside the small shed that James built for it, to the cup of Remus’ favorite tea that Lily stocks especially for him, to the picture of the four of them waving furiously on a spontaneous weekend trip to Brighton last fall, framed and set in pride of place above the fireplace. To the baby snuggled securely in Sirius’ arms, sleeping with his fist curled beside his rosy cheek._

_Sirius meets his eyes again, and he’s wearing that smile that means he’s had to explain something incredibly simple to Remus again. That smile should annoy him, but at this very moment, Remus can’t find it in him to do anything other than lean carefully across the slumbering baby and kiss Sirius with all the sincerity he can muster. It’s returned enthusiastically, and they spend long moments in the soft moonlight simply enjoying this closeness, this quiet. Until Harry shifts in his sleep and frowns the frown that is usually accompanied by renewed and energetic wailing._

_Sirius quickly slips the warm little bundle of his godson into Remus’ unsuspecting arms, chuckling at Remus’ first-surprised and then-indignant expression. But Harry calms at once, not waking but instead snuggling closer in against Remus’ chest as Remus holds him stiffly, awkward and unsure under Sirius’ indulgent and amused gaze._

_“See? Never fails. Being near you calms him down,” proclaims Sirius smugly, unable to stop himself from adjusting blankets and limbs to make both Harry and Remus as comfortable as possible with the situation. “Smart kid.”_

_Now acclimated to the sudden presence of an infant in his arms, Remus feels a sudden rush of something that makes him think that he might understand what Sirius means about this being enough. He can suddenly envision it-- the Sunday breakfasts in Lily’s sunny kitchen, the nervous hovering over Harry’s toddling baby steps, the books and the holidays and the Hogwarts Quidditch matches-- and he finds that, to his surprise, he wants it, too. Wants to watch the tiny boy in his arms grow up, watch Lily help him with his homework, watch James grow steadily grey around the temples as he deals with a child who will surely cause him no end of righteously deserved headaches… and do it all with Sirius beside him, to laugh and tease and protect and support._

_“What pranks have you been keeping from James, Merlin help us?” he murmurs, suddenly unable to look away from the sleeping child and the future he represents._

_“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about them,” Sirius smiles. “We won’t be able to do any of the more elaborate ones until he’s learnt to walk, anyway.”_

_“You’re going to turn him into a criminal before he’s even old enough to_ crawl _.”_

_“Well, you’ll be there, too. I have to get my hooks in him early. Otherwise he’ll never leave the library.”_

_Remus rolls his eyes, and settles back into Sirius’ chest, the arm Sirius has flung across the back of the sofa coming to wrap around Remus’ shoulder as James gives another honking snore._

_“And just think,” sighs Sirius. “With his dad making noises like_ that _all the time, the kid will probably run away to ours at least once a week just to get some peace and quiet.”_

_“I have years of anecdotal evidence to prove that your snoring’s just as awful.”_

_“Well,” shrugs Sirius, his eyes laughing as he looks down at the baby. “For Harry, I’ll sleep on my side.”_

_Remus smiles, adjusting the baby in his arms and trying not to be shocked by the swelling of protective joy that rises in his chest as he gazes at this remarkable human being, illuminated in the light of a single candle. James is a_ father _, and Sirius a_ godfather _, and Remus will get to help his best friends raise this child with familiar wild black hair and green eyes, and he suddenly can’t wait for what will happen. He finds that he can ignore the looming presence of Voldemort, the danger and uncertainty of their lives at the moment, because the child in his arms will help to save them all._

_“We’re going to get through this,” he whispers, suddenly believing it for the first time in many grim months. “Aren’t we?”_

_Sirius smiles that_ Everything is Simple _smile at him again. “Yes. Together.”_

********

The fire is burning lower in the hearth and the sun has moved its weak grey light inexorably westward, and Remus is slumped in the faded old armchair, feeling the imminent tug of the moon on his bones. He should get up and perform the spells that will sequester the wolf during the moon, chain himself in the small, windowless room and brace himself for the onslaught of the monster. He should, and he will. He will. But just… not yet.

In spite of everything-- in spite of abandoning Harry to the abuses of his relatives when he should have been there as he grew up, of believing, even for a second, that Sirius could have been capable of betraying James, in spite of years of selfish, useless self-pity and truly magnificent levels of moping-- Remus can’t help but hope that Sirius had meant it when he had promised _together_. That he might, by some miracle, _still_ mean it.

The sun is steadily sinking toward the horizon, and he can feel the wolf stirring from where it’s been sulking since their mental showdown two weeks ago, but the memory of Sirius’ wasted form where he crouched in the corner of this room, the look of recognition and hope and perhaps something else that had flashed in his eyes when they’d met Remus’ for the first time in thirteen years, makes his wish for _together_ seem dangerously within reach.

So he settles back in the massive armchair, grits his teeth hard against the inevitable pull of the moon, and waits.

Just a little longer.

********  
He awakes with a snarl to a loud crashing sound coming from the floor below. The sun is setting; he must have dozed off at some point while staring into the fire, which has burned down a bit to a dim flicker in the steadily darkening room. Remus clutches his wand in one hand, trying desperately to maintain the mental barriers painstakingly constructed against the wolf, weakened as they have been in his sleep. The world around him slowly comes into focus, the animal in his boiling blood reduced to a simmer once again as he breaths slowly in through his nose, counting his heartbeats as they slow back to normal.  
  
From the floor below comes another crash, this one less violent than the first, followed by energetic swearing in a hoarse voice he’s only been imagining for months.


	19. Sirius

Breath heaving, Sirius skids to a halt in front of the Shrieking Shack, doing his best to ignore the burning stitch in his side. Moonrise isn't far off, maybe half an hour. Remus will have performed most of the protective spells by now, it's a miracle he even left the Shack possible for Sirius to find. Until now, standing before the familiar boarded up shutters and tilting door frames, he hadn't actually allowed himself to believe he'd make it in time. But there's no way to tell which enchantments Remus has already implemented merely by looking at the Shack. And there's certainly no way to break the spells without knowing what they are.   
  
Sirius steels himself , fully aware that this will end with pain. Without hesitation, he begins running towards the Shrieking Shack at full tilt, bracing himself to be thrown backwards, to lose feeling in his paws, to have his thoughts scrambled as if filled with static. 30 meters away. 20. Perhaps the walls are impenetrable. 15. 10. Perhaps the Shack is merely a ghostly representation, which he will run straight through, unable to enter. Five meters away. Three. One.   
  
With an unexpected and brutal crash, Sirius goes sailing through a boarded up window. He lands in a cloud of dust and splinters, coughing out his surprise and gingerly rubbing his left elbow. In his shock and fear, he had resumed human form without being fully cognizant of doing so.    
  
"Bloody cock wanker!" he shouts in frustration. After all of this effort and hope and risk, after all of the hesitation and doubt and fear, Remus is not here. No charms protect the house, although the moon is nearly risen. Remus must not have made it back in time. Or perhaps he had second thoughts...   
  
Sirius holds his head in his hands, trying to bite back the bitter disappointment. A creak on the stairs causes Sirius to jump to his feet. There, not more than a gnome’s throw away from him, stands Remus Lupin. With his hair cut short and his knitted jumper hanging loosely on his slight frame, he looks exactly and not at all like the Remus Lupin of Sirius' memory.   
  
"Bloody Merlin, Moony. What are you doing?"

“Trying to remember if you’ve always had such trouble with doors, or if this is a more recent development.”

Spluttering, Sirius manages to spit out the last vestiges of dust from the corners of his mouth. He looks up at Remus,  taking measured breaths , trying to infer as much as possible from Remus’ posture, his clothes, his tone of voice, the way his head is cocked slightly to the side. He looks for all the world like a man mildly startled out of his evening routine-- nothing like an anguished werewolf dreading his impending change. A surge of annoyance bubbles in Sirius’ chest; he smothers it angrily.

“Yes, well. I was expecting there to be some form of a barrier,” he says, frustrated by the sharpness he can hear in his own voice. He clenches and unclenches his left hand, digging his nails into his palm. This is not the first impression he had intended to make. He looks at Remus once again, and softens as he notices the lines of worry etched across the other man’s forehead and the way he wipes his sweaty palms on his trousers. “Remus, what is it? Is something wrong? Is that why the barriers aren’t intact?”

The tips of Remus’ ears redden, to Sirius’ great interest. His eyes slide to the side, taking in the dust and debris left over from Sirius’ sudden appearance in the Shack.

“Dumbledore is not going to be happy with you,” Remus observes with studied mildness. “All the energy it must have taken to get this place looking halfway livable again, and you’ve gone and botched that up good and proper.”

Sirius scans the great room to his left, eyes falling on the swept floors exhibiting only shadows of scratches, the plush chairs free of tears and claw marks, the soft light coming from the flickering fireplace on the far side. Like Remus, it both is and is not the Shrieking Shack of Sirius’ memory. The deep marks which once covered the wooden floor have been smoothed over, the formerly decimated furniture has been replaced. Someone could read in this room, relax in this room, have pleasant and benign conversation in this room. It holds only wisps of its former horror. Sirius’ eyes make their way to the staircase, upon which Remus stands, holding the railing with his left hand and worrying at the sleeve of his jumper with his right. The stairs, once splintered and nearly collapsed, now confidently hold Remus’ weight - still shabby, but with their functionality restored. Sirius laughs his surprise.

“I’ve the entire Wizarding and Muggle world out for my blood, Remus, I hardly think the displeasure of Albus Dumbledore will get my knickers in a bunch.”

A flash of familiar annoyance darkens Remus’ features. It is all Sirius can do not to smile affectionately at the well-known look, but as Remus appears in no mood to entertain lightheartedness, he schools his features into blandness as he takes in the other man.

“Oh yes,” Remus answers, his tone on the edge of a sneer. “Right. By all means, make jokes. Because having every wizard and muggle in Britain ready to alert the Dementors if you’re just the slightest bit careless is the most hilarious thing I can think of. How nice it must be to feel so cavalier about the continued survival of your soul. How freeing to simply insist over and over again that you’re safe and hope that saying it will make it true! As if your even being here is not putting you in a stupid amount of needless danger. Forgive me for overreacting.”

Blandness be damned. Sirius is on his feet, striding towards the bottom of the stairs, fists clenched and snarl sharp. “Thank you ever so much for your concern, Remus, I’m touched, truly I am. How reckless of me to come here. What an idiotic and pointless endeavor. How could I possibly have concocted such a plan? What impetus  _ could _ I have for venturing out tonight, of all nights? Oh, wait…” There is no softness in his eyes as he glares up at Remus, his mouth a thin line.

The red in Remus’ ears has migrated to his cheeks. He can’t seem to make his eyes stay on Sirius, nor can he seem to keep them away. They flicker to and away from him in manic intervals, and his fists clench and unclench, as though he is trying to keep his grip on some catastrophic outburst. Which, Sirius thinks with a sinking feeling, he really is. He’s seen Remus this way before, but not since they were much younger, and Remus was a child who had not yet learned to anticipate the violent fluctuations that accompany his impending change.

“It was a moment of weakness,” mutters Remus, unwilling to meet Sirius’ intent gaze. “Stupid and ill-advised, and I’m sorry I did it. I just didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to take such a reckless risk just because I was too weak to consider the consequences.”

Sirius halts his aggravated pacing in surprise. “You thought _ I  _ would be more responsible than  _ you _ ?? Are you delusional, Remus, or have you entirely forgotten to whom you speak?”

Remus looks at him with level, haunted eyes. “I thought you might have changed, Sirius,” he says, his voice low and falsely calm. Sirius can hear the strain behind every word. “I didn’t expect you to still be the  _ boy _ you were before you went to Azkaban.”

The words hit Sirius like a punch to the stomach, and he finds himself  struggling to breathe . He turns away slowly, keeping his face blank until Remus can no longer see it. He runs his hand slowly through his tangled hair, buying himself time to calm his quickening pulse. This is the Remus who lives in the darkness of Sirius’ mind: the Remus who is disappointed, scornful, who expected someone better.

There is a long and pregnant pause. “Look,” says Remus, the strain still evident but his voice softer, more reasonable, more  _ Remus _ now. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just… I wouldn’t expect you to put yourself in needless and totally unnecessary danger. I thought you’d have more sense than that after… everything.”

Like a tightly wound spring come perilously undone, Sirius whirls around to face Remus once again. “You thought  _ I’d _ have more sense than that?! More sense than to come to the aid of an old friend? My, how your priorities have evolved. I guess  _ I  _ didn’t think  _ you _ had changed so much. Needless and unnecessary danger! You’re one to speak,  _ mate _ . Chasing Greyback all across the countryside, leading you Merlin knows where, putting you in the path of the most dangerous creature the Wizarding world has to offer. I may have been in Azkaban for twelve years, but I know plenty well what Greyback is capable of, what he loves even. I can’t count how many inmates screamed his name as they relived the horror he inflicted on them. And you! You decide that you -  without backup, without training, without even telling me - will go take him on. As if he wouldn’t turn you into a plaything for his pack without a second thought. When  _ Dumbledore _ told me where you were. I hadn’t heard from you in weeks! I had no idea if.... And  _ you’re _ lecturing  _ me _ on needless and unnecessary danger!?”

The anger does not flash across Remus’ face this time-- it roars into his eyes with the wild intensity of fire, and before Sirius knows what has happened, Remus is on him and he is being slammed into the wall at his back, one hand-- terrifyingly strong with the imminent rise of the moon-- is curled around his windpipe with a sort of savage tenderness that steals  Sirius’ breath once more .  _ Ah,  _ he thinks to himself with a shiver of hysterical satisfaction.  _ That’s got a rise out of you, finally. _

But Remus’ gaze betrays nothing at all of the simmering anticipation Sirius can feel low in his stomach. Instead, there is a darkness in his friend’s eyes that he’s suddenly not at all sure has anything to do with the impending change. Remus’ fingers tighten convulsively around his throat, and Sirius wants to look away but can’t seem to tear his eyes from the anger and pain and strange, dark humor that he can read in Remus’ well-loved and desperately changed face.

“Oh,” growls Remus, his voice low and dangerous in a way that sends a shiver down Sirius’ spine. “Oh. So we’re going to talk about running off half-cocked without even a word to seek out deadly and unpredictable dangers, are we? We’re going to discuss the merits of taking on dark wizards and homicidal maniacs with not one word about where we’re going, without even a ‘goodbye’ or a ‘fuck off’ to mark our departure? Excellent, Sirius. I’m so anxious to hear your thoughts on the subject, what with all your first hand experience in stupid, reckless choices with the potential to ruin lives.”

Sirius can feel Remus’ fingers clench tighter around his neck, the other man’s nails beginning to dig into his skin. Panic begins to seep into the anger coursing through him. A man is no match for a wolf, and he has never before seen Remus so wild this close to transformation. Remus’ breath is hot and invasive on Sirius’ face; Sirius tries to pull away, but the grip around his neck is too strong. In one swift movement, he brings up his right arm and slams it down on the arm Remus is using to pin him to the wall. At the same time, he kicks awkwardly at Remus’ knee, causing Remus to lose his balance and relinquish his hold around Sirius’ neck. Sirius leaps out of the way quickly, rubbing his neck with his hand, backing away. “Oh yes! Me and my reckless choices! Poor Remus, forever cleaning up after me. Such a chore it must have been to be my friend. How relieved you must have felt to be well shot of me when I got sent to Azkaban. No more messes for Remus!”

There is almost nothing of the man Sirius has known for most of his life in the face of the figure advancing toward him. There is a hard, feral sort of grimace on Remus’ face, his features distorted and lupine, and suddenly Sirius is very aware of his scrawny, prison-weak frame and the hard breadth of Remus’ shoulders as he stalks forward once again. He backs further into the partially-restored great room until his legs meet resistance and he is taken out at the knees by a faded chintz armchair. Landing hard across the squashy cushion, his legs dangle helplessly over one arm as he struggles to right himself.

Remus looms up above him, a wolf cornering his prey, and the intensity of his gaze feels like a physical thing scratching painfully across Sirius’ upturned face. He leans down close to Sirius, teeth bared and eyes wild, and plants a curiously lengthening hand to the left of Sirius’ shoulder on the sun-bleached arm of the chair. His breath smells of tea and chocolate and incongruously of fresh blood as he leans close into Sirius’ face. Sirius closes his eyes, convinced he’s about to experience the surely-unpleasant sensation of having his throat ripped out, when Remus speaks, in a voice that is brittle with both pain and the pent-up fury of a decade.

“Being your  _ friend _ ? Your  _ friend _ , Sirius? It wasn’t being your  _ friend _ that destroyed any hope of a life I could have had, you unbelievable, selfish bastard! It was the part where I was so  _ madly _ in love with you I couldn’t see anything else, and then  _ you _ left  _ me _ to pick up your socks off the floor when I thought you’d murdered James and you were rotting in Azkaban!  _ You _ left  _ me _ , Sirius!  _ I’m _ the mess you didn’t clean up!”

Sirius can   feel his stomach clench and swoop in a way that is sharply at odds with the fear that has taken over his entire body. He lets out a maniacal and irrepressible laugh, a product of overwhelming terror and confusion. “You...a mess? Of, of course I left you, I got sent to Azkaban!” Sirius looks wildly around the room, searching for a clue to Remus’ meaning, or a weapon to use in his own defense. Remus seems to be growing taller and more broad, but Sirius no longer trusts his own perception. “Remus, what do you mean? I-I didn’t mean to...I never meant to...Remus!”

Sirius has seen Remus transform into the wolf numerous times before, but it never gets any less terrifying-- never looks any less heinously painful for his friend. The sickening cracks and pops of shifting bones reverberate through the air of the Shack, and Remus’ skin ripples and shivers as though fault lines run beneath it, ready to shake him apart from the inside. The soft grey eyes Sirius has been imagining in his most desperate moments for thirteen years are suddenly a vivid and poisonous bloodshot black, flat disks catching the light of the fully-risen moon now filtering in through the cracks in the boarded-up windows. The werewolf is nearly taller than Sirius even when it falls onto four heavily-muscled legs and crouches, eyes fixed menacingly on him, in a lithe and sinuous prowl.

“Remus…” Sirius breathes, though he knows that it is quite useless to try and reach the other man now. More than a decade of undergoing the transformation in isolation will have undone all of the gentling influence of their marauding days, and so Sirius finds himself standing, fully human, before a Dark creature who can no more confess to loving him than it could debate international political theory with the Minister of Magic.

Sirius scrabbles in his robes for his wand, pulling it out with trembling fingers and trying to calm himself enough for the task at hand. He knows from experience that he’ll have about two minutes of disorientation until the wolf begins to stalk him in earnest, and it must be prevented from leaving the Shack at all costs. It would kill Remus to have put anyone in unnecessary danger. Sirius takes a deep, centering breath and summons all the protective charms and impregnability spells that Remus drilled into all of their heads as boys.

Protective enchantments completed, Sirius returns his gaze to the wolf. The massive creature remains in the room, still shaking his head back and forth and clawing at the floor: He hasn’t yet found his bearings. Sirius turns away, running up the stairs. The best way to bide himself some time is to spread his scent far and wide throughout the house, giving the wolf a trail to follow. Wolf-Remus loves to play cat and mouse, slowly following a scent, learning as much as he can about his quarry through variations in scent and location. Sirius rolls on the ground in one bedroom, jumps up on the bed, sits on the rocking chair, licks his palm and runs his hand across the ceiling. He makes his way quickly into each room, creating as complex and alluring of a trial as possible.

He finally enters the last room: It is shockingly different than the others. Small, nearly empty and windowless, floors still warped and wallpaper peeling. Chains hang from the far wall. This then, was where Dumbledore intended Remus to transform. Sirius looks around; he should attempt to contain the wolf in this room if possible. A low, splintered table sits in the corner. High enough for a dog to fit under, far too small for a werewolf. Sirius breathes in and transforms. 


	20. Remus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly, slowly...bringin' it back!!

The first sensation of which Remus is aware is an sharp pain digging into his stomach. A warm, but disconcertingly angular presence is snugged up against his front, pressed close enough for Remus to feel the reedy bumps of prominent ribs beneath his human hands. 

The second sensation is that of being mown over by a Peruvian Vipertooth. His eyelids seem to be made of lead that has been coated in a fine layer of sand. His body feels as though it’s been shaken apart in an earthquake, only to be put back together haphazardly by inexpert and disinterested hands. He takes quick stock of himself without moving, not wanting to alert the ribbed thing in front of him to his wakeful state. Pulse loud and thudding in his head: normal. Skin tender and loose feeling over abused muscles: par for the course. Ribbed thing stretching out before him and becoming a very clearly Sirius-shaped human body, complete with sleepy morning noises and a strong whiff of warm dog and damp earth: very definitely not normal. 

Well, not for a long time, anyway. 

“I know you’re awake,” mumbles a groggy voice from somewhere within a tangle of black hair.

Remus’ whole abused body freezes, all of its disparate parts suddenly united in shared mortification. A tumble of memories, bright and lucid but with the angry fog of the wolf-brain gnawing at their edges, comes flooding back into his mind: Sirius on the floor, surrounded by splintered bits of crashed-in window. Sirius staring up at him with so much care and worry and affection that Remus had very nearly broken down and thrown himself at the other man. Snarled accusations, confessions hurled like knives, wishing to wound. Had he anything in his already queasy stomach, he may have expelled it right here. He holds very still, tries to school his breathing back into the rhythms of sleep, hoping Sirius might believe he’s made a mistake and allow Remus to avoid what will surely be a deeply unpleasant and embarrassing exchange. 

Remus feels the body next to him tense and begin to shift. Possibly with the intention of rolling over, and - the prospect is almost too horrifying to imagine - looking at him. He feels Sirius attempting to free his own eyes from their messy veil and hears him say, more softly this time, “Moony? Are you ok? You are back, aren’t you?”

Remus studies the dark mess of Sirius’ hair where it brushes Sirius’ bony shoulder. His fingers itch to touch-- to smooth the wild tangle into something like its windswept rakishness of old-- but the sinking feeling of stony horror weighing down his stomach takes precedence, and he studiously continues to avoid Sirius’ attempts to catch his eye over his own shoulder.

“Is it possible to die of mortification?”

Sirius chuckles, low and amused and perhaps a little relieved, and Remus feels his shoulders relax as Sirius presses his bare and very cold feet against Remus’ shins in a way that is achingly familiar before he replies, “I’m sure if it were, you would have died sometime back in fourth year, Moony. I wouldn’t fuss yourself too much about it.”

Remus groans and pushes back from the distracting warmth of Sirius body, curling in on himself, elbows and knees tucked in tightly as though to minimize the impact of the embarrassment that is seeping slowly from his brain and throughout his whole body. He doesn’t answer Sirius, who takes the opportunity presented by Remus’ retreat to actually roll over to face him, his eyes soft and concerned in the two seconds Remus meets his gaze before fixing his concentration somewhere to the left of Sirius’ nostril. 

He’s doing admirably well, he thinks, at being nose-to-nose with his long-lost, star-crossed, and (shockingly, given his location for the last thirteen years) wonderful-smelling former-lover, as he has neither given in to the temptation to snog Sirius through the floor (multiple complicated hyphenates be damned) nor the one to burst into hysterical, unmanly tears. He’s really quite proud of his self-restraint, actually. That is, until Sirius brings a tentative hand to his face, brushing away a bit of Remus’ fringe that is falling into his eyes, and Remus has to suddenly focus quite a bit more of his attention than normal on simply drawing breath into his lungs. 

“Hey, Moony,” and hearing Sirius breathe that name into the space between them is doing painful things to Remus’ recently-reconstructed chest cavity. “Moony, what’s with the mortification? That’s ridiculous.” Remus closes his eyes. He can feel Sirius’ bony fingers splayed out across his cheek, his thumb brushing soft little circles just south of Remus’ lips. 

“Easy for you to say,” he mumbles, but can’t stop himself from leaning into Sirius’ palm. “You were here the whole time.” 

“Oh, come on,” Sirius sighs, a tiny bit of that familiar good-natured exasperation coloring the edges of his soft, compassionate tone. “It’s not like I’ve never seen you like this before.” When Remus only groans at this, Sirius moves his hand up to ruffle Remus’ already unforgivable bed-head and says, in a shockingly bad American accent, “this ain’t my first ro-day-oh, pard’ner.” 

In order to roll his eyes, Remus first has to open them, to the sight of Sirius grinning goofily at him. “I’ll give you ten galleons if you can actually tell me what a rodeo is.” 

“It’s a thing tough muggles do. American ones, I mean. Tough American muggles with hippos. Horses! Horses. And whoever catches the biggest rhino gets the crown.”

Remus can’t help but laugh at this, and at the smug grin of triumph that grows wider on Sirius’ face at his laughter. Merlin, that smile. The one Sirius wears when he’s done something clever and made Remus smile or laugh or want to hex him. Slightly lopsided and bright in his eyes and always, always just for Remus.

He never thought he’d see that smile again. 

The anger of the night previous makes a weak swipe at his heart, but is quickly superseded by an aching sort of quiet melancholy that silences his laughter and makes it once again difficult to meet Sirius’ gaze. He instead examines Sirius’ collarbone, noting the pale color of it, even after all these months on the run, and the two small freckles that he’s traced his fingers over too many times to count. He resists the urge to do so now, and keeps quiet, not really sure what he’s waiting for, but hoping it will happen soon. 

Sirius lets the silence grow between them, and Remus is grateful for the opportunity just to breathe. It’s been so long since he’s even had to think about another person during these shaky, nauseous hours following his transformation. It’s usually just him in the silence; the heavy breathing as his mind re-inhabits his body, the bitten-off whimpers as he sees to the cuts and bruises that inevitably accompany the change. He’s grateful beyond measure to Sirius for recognizing his need for respite, for these stolen moments in which Remus can will himself human again. 

It is almost fifteen minutes later, by Remus’ reckoning, when Sirius coughs quietly in his throat and ducks his head to break Remus’ almost trancelike fixation with his neck. He chuckles softly, seemingly a little wary of breaking the silence, but speaks nevertheless, with a hint of a smile in his voice. 

“So. Moony. What do you remember?”

Remus is too surprised to hide the smile that immediately spreads across his face. It seems a sensible enough question, of course, given the circumstances, but he’s spent years studiously avoiding thinking about it, all the same. Soft-edged memories of the Hogwarts hospital wing, opening his gritty eyes to the sight of two dark-haired boys grinning at him from beside his hospital cot: James and Sirius at twelve. James and Sirius at thirteen, at fifteen. James, with an impressive black eye from a truly heroic showing in the Quidditch final against Slytherin their seventh year, and Sirius, his smile gone a little gooey with the newness of his hand laced surreptitiously with Remus’ beneath the comforter. And each of these visits had begun with that question, usually followed by James and Sirius regaling him with the grand adventures of the night before, Peter chipping in occasionally with an eagerness that begged them all not to forget he was there. 

This was the question that had made them the Marauders. 

“It’s all a little hazy,” Remus replies, though it’s not. “I seem to remember shouting in your face that I am in love with you, and then turning into an enormous wolf monster…” his stomach flips unpleasantly at this admission, “...but I could be misremembering.” 

There’s a beat of shocked stillness, Sirius swallowing audibly the only acknowledgement that he’s been heard.

The feeling of having one’s heart beating directly in one’s throat is incredibly unpleasant, thinks Remus hysterically as Sirius remains silent, not replying for the first time in this horrible, mortifying mistake of a conversation. As the seconds tick by with no witty rejoinder, no wry quip, no sound at all, Remus begins to suspect that he may be in the process of dying of mortification, after all. 

“Oh, Merlin. I’m sorry, Sirius, I didn’t mean to say-- and now I’ve gone and buggered up the whole thing and-- I didn’t mean--”

Sirius’ lips are warmer than he could have anticipated, if he’d been anticipating feeling them at all. They’re dry and slightly chapped and gently closed and so warm against Remus’ mouth that anything else he might have wanted to say dies instantly as all of his concentration snaps immediately to the singular sensation of Sirius’ mouth on his. 

Sirius kisses him carefully, softly, his lips tentative and sweet as they move minutely, taking questioning little sips at Remus’, though Remus’ brain seems to have vacated the premises and left him stunned and unresponsive as he attempts to catalogue every detail of this, in case it never happens again. 

And long before he wants it to, before he’s gotten back the use of his brain, Sirius’ lips freeze on his, and then pull back. No, no, come back, please come back…

“Shit,” moans Sirius, his head thunking unpleasantly against the wood of the floor as he pulls away from Remus and attempts to hide in his own nest of ragged, tangled hair. “Shit, shit, I’m sorry. It’s just, you said am not was and I got confused, just forget it, oh god, I--” 

Turns out that Sirius’ method of shutting someone up works just as well on its originator. The capacity to think has come flooding back to Remus’ shocked mind, and the only thought that matters-- kiss Sirius now-- has taken precedence over everything else. He winds one arm around Sirius’ scrawny waist and tries to get the other hand buried in his hair, but gives it up as a bad job and simply cups the other man’s cheek, bringing Sirius closer as he kisses him with very un-Remus-like abandon. Sirius stiffens momentarily with surprise, and then responds enthusiastically, opening his mouth to Remus and deepening the kiss as though he’s suddenly discovered that oxygen is overrated. 

For several minutes, Remus forgets everything in the achingly sweet endeavor of re-learning the feel of Sirius’ lips beneath his. They might still be young men with their whole lives ahead of them; no wrongful imprisonments, no self-imposed exiles, no lonely, echoing, empty years without this feeling of closeness, of being loved by someone whom you also love immensely. 

It is Sirius who finally breaks the kiss, letting out a slightly breathless chuckle and burying his face in Remus’ neck. “I could get used to you telling me to shut up if you’re going to do it like that every time.”

“We’re not done talking about things, you know,” Remus murmurs, running his nose along Sirius’ matted hair. Damn, but he needs a haircut. “Everything I said last night-- everything we’ve been through-- none of that ends here. This isn’t just happily ever after, Sirius. Please tell me you know that.”

Sirius pulls back from where he’s been dotting little kisses into the crook where Remus’ neck meets his shoulder, his eyes intense and sincere as they meet Remus’ with purpose. “I know that, Remus. I do. And I want to talk about those things. I want to make sure that we do this right.” He smiles that soft, wonder-filled smile that makes Remus’ stomach heat pleasantly, and there is nothing for it but for Remus to lean forward and capture Sirius’ mouth again, the kiss deliberate and certain. A promise of things to come. 

“But,” says Sirius, when they break apart. His eyes flash with mischief as they wander pointedly downward. “Maybe we should wait to discuss the important stuff until you’re not stark naked.” 

Remus’ eyes follow Sirius’, taking note for the first time this morning of the unsurprising fact that he is, of course, without a stitch of clothing. He sighs, resting his forehead on Sirius’ shoulder and resigning himself to the utter ridiculousness of his life. “Why is it always me who’s stark naked?”

Sirius snickers as he gathers Remus closer, burying his nose in Remus’ hair and pressing a soft kiss to his temple. “Just lucky, I guess.”


End file.
